US Asks Foreign Allies To Avoid Huawei (cnet.com)

The US government is reportedly trying to persuade its foreign allies' wireless and internet providers to avoid Huawei equipment. From a report: Officials have spoken to their counterparts and telecom bosses in Germany, Italy, Japan and other friendly countries where the Chinese company's equipment is already in use, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources. The US is reportedly particularly worried about the use of Huawei equipment in countries with American military bases, since most nonsensitive communication travels via commercial networks, and it's concerned about Chinese meddling.

Comments

So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[bill_mcgonigle]

You can't buy this kind of premium advertising.

Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[Freischutz]

You can't buy this kind of premium advertising.

I've had a couple of Huawei's 4G usb/wifi connectors. Thus far they have turned both turned out to be a complete and utter pile of crap so the US Govt. is preaching to the converted as far as I am concerned since I am already avoiding Huawei products like the bubonic plague.

Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[Zocalo]

Depends where the hardware is in your infrastructure and your levels of paranoia/security requirements. A lot of my clients run high-value networks (national infrastructure, etc.) and most are now moving towards dual-vendor perimeter firewall solutions, creating a physical DMZ in between, not the virtual ones you get by applying rules to traffic passing between internal different ports on the same firewall.

One vendor is typically from a Five Eyes country (there's only so many options for this kind of hardware), and the other absolutely will not be - internal firewalls may also be deployed. Rulesets on both with be default deny, and both will be actively monitored for suspicious traffic coming from the other as part of the standard IDS/IPS setup. Even if both are backdoored on behalf of their manufacturer's governments, it's going to be very hard for either country's security services to get into the network through both firewalls, or to successfully exfiltrate data from a compromised box on the inside.

Well, that's the theory at least. If one or both know about the other's backdoors (which is why this is such a terrible idea in the first place, because sooner or later they probably will) then all bets are off.

Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[mark-t]

Even if we assume that the Chinese have a backdoor into that equipment, it's better than the NSA/GCHQ having a backdoor into it.

Explain this reasoning.... how is a foreign backdoor preferable to a domestic one?

Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[AmiMoJo]

Domestic spies can make my life much worse than ones who have no jurisdiction.

Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[Joce640k]

Explain this reasoning.... how is a foreign backdoor preferable to a domestic one?

The Chinese government isn't going to try to arrest a US citizen in his own home, put them on a no-fly list because they read the Koran once, or whatever.

Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[Opportunist]

What will the Chinese secret service do if I google the wrong topics?

And now, what will the NSA do?

And which of the two do you think will have more impact on my quality of life?

Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[Opportunist]

Well, probably the only one that fails to grease the right palms.

Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[Cajun Hell]

You are more boring to a distant adversary who has a very weak relationship with you, compared to a nearby adversary who both rules over you and is also ruled by you. (e.g. The Austrialian government has more reason to fuck with Australians than the Austrian government does. And the Austrian government has more reason to fuck with Austrians than Australians.)

Re: So they won't cooperate with the NSA?

[sound vision]

The "nightmare scenario" is that all the available hardware is riddled with backdoors - and we are already in this scenario.

If your network is important enough, and you don't have the resources to build your own equipment from the ground-up, layering is the only way to mitigate these hardware backdoors. You won't close them, oh no... But now an attacker needs to get through 2 doors instead of 1.

Of course!

[gweihir]

If people use Huawei, the NSA-Backdoors (e.g. Cisco) are not present! They cannot have that...

Backdoor

[Anonymous Coward]

USA asks countries to only use NSA backdoored equipment.

Why?

[lennier1]

For most users the difference between American or Chinese backdoors in their hardware means jack shit!

Cool I'm safe

[grumpy-cowboy]

I'm from Canada and I use a Google Pixel phone. My privacy is protected!

Re:Cool I'm safe

[DontBeAMoran]

I did not miss the sarcasm, but I think this is abusing the code/monotype tag. As AC said above, I see it as "vanity plates" for comments, i.e. "look at me, I'm different!"

The Chinese are not the good guys

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if we assume that the Chinese have a backdoor into that equipment, it's better than the NSA/GCHQ having a backdoor into it.

I really have to point this out: the Chinese government are really NOT the good guys.

Yeah, the slashdot echo chamber says over and over "NSA bad!", but, really, learn something about what the Chinese government is doing to see some serious repression.

Re:The Chinese are not the good guys

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but if you live in the USA, the Chinese aren't the ones who can put you in jail.

Re:The Chinese are not the good guys

[Opportunist]

Yes, the Chinese government is a million times worse than the US one. The story about getting an automatic ticket when crossing the road while the traffic light shows red because their CCTV with facial recognition is linked to their passport database alone is creepy to say the least.

And a swine flu pandemic in Asia certainly is more critical than a common flu over here. Yet I'd be more concerned of getting the common flu over here because I rarely travel to Asia. And I'm more concerned about an agency that at least has some chance to have an impact on my life over one that almost certainly has none.

Even aside of the whataboutism in your complaint, this is simple risk assessment. Even a risk that is mission crippling may be ignored if it cannot strike, while you have to take one that has a lower impact into account if it can.

Re:The Chinese are not the good guys

[XXongo]

G. Bush allowed (this is well documented, BTW) allowed the Chinese to assassinate a dissonant reporter on U.S. soil.

The phrase "this is well documented", posted without any documentation, can be translated as meaning "this is not documented; I heard it from some conspiracy paranoid on the internet somewhere".

China does execute more people than rest of world combined

No evidence, no proof, no oversight

[Tokolosh]

If the US government has information that Huawei is nefarious, why not present the evidence? Instead, we must trust the say-so of an organization that asserts the right to snoop on it's own citizens, to drone-strike them without trial, and to prosecute non-US whistleblowers.

I realize that the Chinese are not innocent, but from the point of view of an American they are the lesser of two evils.

Re:No evidence, no proof, no oversight

[Type44Q]

I realize that the Chinese are not innocent, but from the point of view of an American they are the lesser of two evils.

Only an ignorant American. Our government may be just as stupid, corrupt and evil as China's but their respective methods of maintaining control differ enough that it's obvious which regime people usually try to escape from... and which one* they try to escape to.*

*Media grandstanding notwithstanding (say that fast)

Re: No evidence, no proof, no oversight

[ljw1004]

I think the question is different... as a private US individual just doing my own stuff unrelated to national security, I'd prefer to be spied upon by the Chinese rather than the US government, simply because they won't care about most of the things I do.

Re:No evidence, no proof, no oversight

[DNS-and-BIND]

Ok I'll bite: how would the Chinese government harm me? Let's say they have everything I do on my phone. What form would this harm take? And more importantly what would the motivation be? The US government has made it clear it hates us deplorables. They have the motivation and the means to harm us. How is China the worse choice?

I'm confused

[AxeTheMax]

Is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black, or is it the other way around?