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US Congress Rules Huawei a 'Security Threat'
dgharmon writes with the lead from a story in the Brisbane Time: "Chinese telecom company Huawei poses a security threat to the United States and should be barred from US contracts and acquisitions, a yearlong congressional investigation has concluded. A draft of a report by the House Intelligence Committee said Huawei and another Chinese telecom, ZTE, 'cannot be trusted' to be free of influence from Beijing and could be used to undermine U.S. security."
Don't panic. If you have a Huawei phone just fill a bucket with water and drop the phone in. After 12 hours you can safely dispose of t in the bin. Then go and buy a phone made in the West like the ....uhm ..... well ... do without a phone.
I guess the same applies to companies like IBM, AT&T and Microsoft in the European Union, companies which undermine our domestic security (see the IBM Lotus Notes backdoor scandal in Sweden) and seek to influence our law makers. In particular AT&T with their lobbying for censorship rules and Microsoft which does not disclose the source code of its applications to the IT security agencies and undermines open source and open standards policies --- as if they were part of the European constituency. Oh, and don't mention the OOXML case.
Sure, if by 'security threat' you mean 'economic threat', and by 'United States' you mean 'Motorola'.
Anonymous Coward
Other government will eventually do the same to Microsoft, following the logic that US always accuses its enemies of everything it does.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
...will misread that as 'Hawaii' and immediately call into question all Hawaiian birth certificates?
Now all the other governments of the world should ban Microsoft for being a security threat and things could become far better for most of the people. Even could be considered "a national security threat", played a major role in Stuxnet/Flame/etc targetted attacks, where US agencies could had been involved.
In fact, with that argument most US based software companies could be banned outside, unless by licence (i.e. open source ones) you can get all the source, recompile and deploy it yourself. And that includes embedded software devices
First off i have a very hard time believing backdoors are built in the large networks they sell. In complex systems like that its next to impossible to hide things in the long run. Anything suspicious would have been found in the audits.
This looks like a try at restricting import with arbitrary reasons without any substance behind them. I am sure many countries smile at this as they get to block American goods like GM corn etc citing safety reasons, and now they can use US own rhetoric.
HTTP/1.1 400
A) no shit. is there really anyone who thinks that a company whose domestic government insists on being involved with and controlling companies with censorship abilities wouldn't be influenced by said government in foreign territories?
B) this would be much better if the US had moral ground to stand upon. alas, it does not.
I'm told this is ironic because the reason that Huawei got started was because the Chinese did all sorts of experiments with Cisco gear and determined that they couldn't trust them because of all the backdoors they had to accommodate US agencies.
The Chinese needed network gear they could trust, they'd been tearing the Cisco gear down for a while to check them for back doors, so they just went the whole hog and started their own router company.
The main reason that the US *know* that the Huwaei gear has back doors in it is probably because they are the same back doors cloned from the Cisco gear, but with different encryption keys.
Hauwei should have started lobbying harder sooner. They spent over 800 million this year but only 200 million last year. Well, if they keep it up things will turn around. Gotta grease those palms in DC to get what you want.
I presume it's purely a coincidence that Cisco stands to lose massive market share if Huawei are allowed to undercut them in their own country..
This could get interesting given the numbers involved. I suspect the story hasn't ended just yet.
their god damned slitty eyes!! Can't spell Indo-China without China!!!!! god damn reds
The replacement for trident is unsafe because it cannot be trusted to be free of US control and interference.
Yet still they're trying hard to buy.
All paranoid xenphobic US atitudes taken in context, this is onethat makes some sense. I just wish all other countries in the World would do the same thing towards US government hooked-up and not-trustable Microsoft.
-><- no
Of course, this "ruling" has zero effect on whether the US actually buys stuff from Huawei.
More empty hollow words with no action from the Republitards in congress trying to one-up Obama's recent anti-China rhetoric.
So we'll get our new 4G LTE system where? Per the 60 Minutes segment that aired last night, there is no U.S. company capable of providing the infrastructure. They named a French, Chinese and perhaps a Swedish company as the only options.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
That the US Government officially took notice of Chinese efforts to spy on and undermine the US; wasn't all that fake Cisco equipment that ended up in the department of defense enough of a wake up call.
....Is why they will have trouble selling their networking hardware in much of the world. If Huawei wasn't founded by a ex-Chinese military official, that might be a different story.
First off i have a very hard time believing backdoors are built in the large networks they sell. In complex systems like that its next to impossible to hide things in the long run. Anything suspicious would have been found in the audits.
I think you underestimate the creativity of the people who make networking gear.
This looks like a try at restricting import with arbitrary reasons without any substance behind them. I am sure many countries smile at this as they get to block American goods like GM corn etc citing safety reasons, and now they can use US own rhetoric.
That's fine. The US House Committee is claiming that Huawei and ZTE receive billions from the Chinese government and are able to subsidize their products with that money so that they can be the lowest bidder to foreign countries. That's not entirely arbitrary as they're not claiming the same thing against Foxconn or Asus. If you want to say Monsanto receives government subsidiaries as tax credits or whatever, you're probably right but so does almost every other international company headquartered out of the United States. Want to place an embargo on the United States? Go right ahead, Iran and Cuba seem to be doing okay. Personally, I think the safety concerns against GM corn are enough to block it and I think they should continue along that line of reasoning -- what economic conspiracy do you have for keeping GM corn out?
... yeah, like you sell networking gear in China and you can say that? Please.
This hearing was open and is completely available on YouTube if you want to rebut more specific claims by the committee. I like listening to the Huawei guy, he's pretty humorous, he says that they will not under any conditions jeopardize the integrity of their networks for any third party or government
Is the free trade not so fun anymore?
Oh, give me a break. Free trade? Are you serious? It's not fun when the most populous country in the world is artificially manipulating its markets, controlling what its currency trades at internally and creating its own companies that are traipsing around claiming to be private companies ... christ, the tariffs and tax laws surrounding international business are so complicated, there's no point in calling any of this "free trade" in any sense of the words.
My work here is dung.
Blaming free trade for the problems of the world is like blaming libertarianism. Sounds great to the permanently pro-government crowd, except for one problem: the measure of libertarianism (and free market economics) in the world today is absolutely tiny.
Thought I'd throw this out there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei_Symantec and this http://www.huaweisymantec.us/ and this http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/technology/symantec-dissolves-alliance-with-huawei-of-china.html?_r=0 Is the alliance is over?
If the Chinese govt machine wants in to your telecom network then they'll get in one way or another.
It's just a choice between giving them a knob and having their hordes of crackers get the information they need. If they can crack the DoD, then telecom networks should be a walk in the park for them.
Personally I think this is a step in the wrong direction from a trade perspective. It really sends the wrong message.
What I find interesting about all this is that the Chinese were reverse-engineering Cisco stuff for decades to find the US gov't backdoors in it, but rather than doing a backroom teardown of Huawei gear to definitively *prove* that there are backdoors (probably in the Lawful Intercept code) , the US authorities simply *assume* that they *are* there and are acting accordingly. As seems to be par for the course these days, methinks that precious few tech types were consulted in this decision...
That would be double standards. For instance, it seems ok to many people that Check Point Software was founded by an ex Unit 8200 member, right? Seems like it's a "they're not our kind of friends" thing and political leverage heading into elections soon.
"Book 'Em Danno"
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I think the larger threat will be the McDonald's happy meal toys which are secretly a massively parallel grid network supercomputer with software defined radios that can .....
Its very difficult to detect back doors in silicon!
Crypto AG makes encryption machines that embassies use to communicate with their governments.
It is widely suspected that the NSA has another KEY that lets them read their "ecrypted" communications. The government made the usual protestations of innocence.
Not that I think you should trust Huawei, either, on the front line. On the front line of your network you should probably have a Linux or BSD firewall.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Time for China to ditch Cisco and Juniper for security reasons as well
Who was giving advices to the government about that?? I dont know why but this smells to some protectionism to Apple... maybe they are to worried about one more iphone competitor....
I really love the US American hypocresy, pressuring China to open their markets and they close their own markets.
How you are going to gain their trust if you dont trust them.
To be fair, the DOJ blocked them from buying sourcefire (the commercial part of Snort) for that very reason in 2006: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6399/1
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Apple didn't want to tangle with them in a predatory lawsuit that even if they won they'd never see a dime, so they simply lobbied Congress to keep them out.
who'd a thought chinese internet could be so evil
I'm damned surprised that it's taken this long for someone up there to wake up.
three words: "Made in China". Good luck of getting rid of this phrase regarding all your electronics.
The very fact Huawei has government connections...
Yes, that's absolutely true, in the free world (ie only the US), private companies never ever have government connections. Cough, cough, cough. Don't look behind the curtain, these aren't the droids that you're looking for.
Because nobody of the "US companies" uses factories in China to do the dirty work...
And nobody could add any spy functionality there... Riiiight!
If the US wants to be "secure" they have to stop allowing companies to have any business in or with foreign countries or pay no taxes through bribery and treasonous manipulation (aka "donations and lobbying").
But they can’t. Since without China doing the cheap stuff, and still taking their printed-just-for-you dollars, the US would risk collapse of the value of the dollar and the inability to buy stuff anymore. And China would lose their biggest client and their economy would crash too.
That won't happen. Not without a 3rd world war in-between.
So, as usual, this is a mere charade. A security theater.
WTF? I guess it must be those loud shirts that could easily blind a pilot during takeoff and landing.
...DoD finds backdoor in nuclear guidance systems.
You read it here first.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The worst my Chineese-made toaster could do is burn down my house.
ZTE and Huawei cannot be used in any sensitive infrastructure in information-sensitive environs within the US Government; nor can Lenovo for that matter.
Heck, it wasn't even the whole House.
It was a report by the House Intelligence Committee.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So show me how turning the argument around makes it invalid? Of course each country has to evaluate these thing on their own. What's your point?
Just make your own Arduino mobile. You remove all of the firmware threat. http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/tutorial-arduino-and-gsm-cellular-part-one/
You know "backdoors" have been a requirement for the authorities for decades right? They don't climb a pole to do a wiretap like in the movies, they just have the telecoms equipment clone and forward a call to whomever is going to listen in. Oh wait that was 1990.
So why would a foreign company not be able to build in any other stuff? They are building the stuff afterall, it's not like they need to reverse engineer it infect it with a virus to install a back door.
So I don't see ANY evidence in the article that Huawei equipment has been responsible for intentional security breaches.
Anybody here evaluated Huawei equipment, or otherwise know more details about the reported issues of it sending "beacons" or "relaying data" back home, or the "anomolies" that appear to be backdoors? The real good stuff seems to be locked-up in that "classified" section we don't get to see...
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/China-high-tech-firms-deny-spying-before-Congress-3861472.php
I'm assuming there's something more than just the bugs exposed at defcon:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229785/Hackers_reveal_critical_vulnerabilities_in_Huawei_routers_at_Defcon
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Odd that all of the comments seems to basically state something along the lines of "US companies likely do it already". The implication being that that makes it OK for everyone else to do it or that by protesting when others do it you're not playing fair. Well, not exactly, that just makes everyone seem foolish. Of course the fact that Huawei's investors are primarily the Chinese government and military who both have a track record of making certain design and feature requirements from the get-go and a long history of data theft and repression is troubling in a manner goes far beyond any other foreign based company. In the end, however, businesses have a choice. Who do you want to share your IP with..China (Huawei), the US (Cisco, Juniper), Sweden (Ericsson), Germany (Seimens) or France (Alcatel Lucent)? Who is more likely to steal it and reuse it or share it with the government and military to keep its people under thumb?
Immediately after the Symantec/Huawei joint venture in 2007, backdoors and trojans began to appear that targeted Symantec products. Symantec products have been a staple of DoD environments for a number of years (http://www.symantec.com/press/2003/n030527a.html), so something like this likely raised more than a few eyebrows. I'm honestly surprised that it took this long considering how much trust we have in the Chinese (extremely little) and the fact that Huawei products had already been blacklisted by the DoD.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
60 Minutes covered this story on Sunday night. The House Intelligence Committee is right to have suspicions of Huawei.
I believe the video is the same that aired on TV.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Huawei isn't a threat to anybody but Cisco and other "American" companies. Cisco spread enough money around Washington to get their competition stomped on. That is all.
PS. If you think that you are important enough that a foreign country is spying on you, maybe you should see a doctor.
Here in canada Dictator Harper (or as I call him Kim Jon Harper) has widely went into bed with Huawei and doesn't see them as a threat.
Just my observation; but it seemed like no one who did business with Huawei could answer yes or no questions with a reply of "yes," or "no."
Congressional investigation dudes, you couldn't have missed the boat by more. You're complaining about a tree while standing in a forest. You're panicking about a little pile of elephant dung that you've stepped in while oblivious to the herd of elephants around you.
"Made in China" is the security threat. Walmart and Bain Capital and its ilk and outsourcing and trade deficits and having everything owned by China is the security threat. It's also too late. When you gave billions of dollars to US companies to bail them out and they turned around and gave it all to China, we were toast.
Yeah, but don't those chipsets from Cisco and Juniper, also made in China, already have the same hardwired backdoors??
Offshore the jobs, technology and investments (along with sensitive defense industry tech) to China, and NOW they claim they're a security threat????? Obviously, Korporate AmeriKa and our criminal congress are the security threats.
What is the difference between an unintentional mistake allowing an advasary to steal information vs intentional sabatoge?
For example assume Microsoft made an honest mistake in the RDP protocol allowing a US based TLA to discover and subsequently hoard a few RDP based root expliots.
While the manufacturer did not intentionally do this outcomes are essentially the same (State has secret capability) and so is the degredation of that capability whenever the state decides it is worth the cost to burn a secret as we have seen play out with stuxnet and flame.
Once you start down the road of paranoia the vista before you is effectivly infinite...with threat trees bigger than anything the Navi people can muster.
For all we know Chinese gov agents have infiltrated TSMC and uploaded order "66" to every piece of sillicon produced in these fabs over the last decade.
Until there is actually substantive evidence of sabatoge based on objective reality rather than paranoia or "its classified" my translation of the article reads as follows:
Be afraid...be very afraid... to be safe buy only from US firms who have donated to our reelection campaigns.
I think someone should use The Freedom of Information Act to acquire the classified documents stating the real reason why Huawei is of such major interest to the U.S. Congress. Can Congress ban a company from the U.S. with no explanation? I think Barack Obama should veto any bill they draft that negatively effects Huawei.
If this government was really serious about dealing with China then they would take away China's favored nation trading status. Sure China is getting all the latest tech info by grabbing it from out IT infrastructure. But when we make it so easily available what does the government expect?
Geopolitics is completely amoral. It's all about securing what needs to be defended and exploiting what needs to be attacked. There is absolutely no 'hypocrisy' when any country seeks to protect themselves while at the same time find ways to subvert others, because no moral calculus is involved. You don't see these congressmen complain that "China is bad" for doing this, they just say "We need to protect ourselves from this". There is no moral judgement, so there can be no hypocrisy. China is not hypocritical when it subsidizes industry while putting maintaining high import duties, it merely acts in its interest. Same goes for the US in this case.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Didn't we (AU government) do this for Huawei and the NBN?
Read about various ways to secure an Oracle Database.[Free to download after registration] http://bit.ly/SL17T6
...get my internet from China than get my internet from US providers. At least China won't impose bandwidth caps and give telecos much needed competition.