Slashdot Mirror
India Bars ZTE, Huawei, Others From Sensitive Government Projects
hypnosec writes "The Indian Government has decided it won't be using telecom equipment from international vendors, and has barred all such foreign companies from participating in the US$3.8 billion National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) project — a project aimed at bringing high-speed Internet connectivity to the rural areas of India. The DoT has decided that it will be going ahead with 100 per cent domestic sourcing and has released a list of certified GPON suppliers. This decision comes after the research wing of the ministry, C-DoT, advised the telecom department to bar Chinese companies like ZTE and Huawei, keeping in line with a similar decision by the U.S. In an internal memo, the research body advised the department that both these Chinese companies are a security threat to the telecom world."
The top three owners of ZTE are all members of the PLA. All three are high ranking officers. One of them is also believed to be a high ranking member of the Chinese equivalent of the CIA.
These men claim that their PLA association is past history and not relevant but they are all still ranking officers in the PLA. Maybe just maybe their ownership is related to the corruption of the PLA and communist party in general and that there is no real connection. The problem is that even if there is no involvement now, the PLA could direct intervention and backdoored firmwares.
I'd be surprised at any government stupid enough to put in place telecom equipment from a company owned by the military of a sovereign nation. You're probably at risk with any non native produced equipment BUT that risk goes up enormously if that foreign company is owned not only by the government of a foreign nation but the military of that nation.
No, it's not racism. It's a legitimate concern, but it doesn't just apply to the chinese. Who's to say that Cisco/nortel/juniper et al don't also have backdoors in their firmware? Frankly, no western country has a right to bitch about chinese government abuse of civil liberties and police state paranoia when they themselves are doing the same things. I'm surprised the indian government isn't choosing to distrust western closed hardware as well. They should.
This is yet another reason why closed software sucks. There's no way to audit what's running on the hardware.
I rather like the idea of interdependence growing to the point where countries simply can't afford to have wars with one another, myself.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Did you forget about NSAKEY_?. Microsoft apparently took great lengths to shush that since you can't remember. There is no telling what Government backdoors are in Microsoft Windows since Indians and Chinese both help write code for it. There was also (and still is) an unknown hole in IE in 2010 that allowed Chinese hackers to steal Data from Google, Adobe and others. The question was: Was it really unknown, or intentionally put there?. Who knows, not us.
Then there is the Hardware backdoor from China, using the ASIC chip in US Military components. It's not a theory or a maybe, it's all fact. If you can't personally see the code for all this Software and Hardware, nobody should use it. But of course, we know that's not possible except with Open Source.