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

Posted by msmash on from the tussle-continues dept.

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.

11 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. So they won't cooperate with the NSA? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can't buy this kind of premium advertising.

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    1. Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA? by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA? by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

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      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    3. Re:So they won't cooperate with the NSA? by mark-t · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  2. Of course! by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  3. Backdoor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    USA asks countries to only use NSA backdoored equipment.

  4. Cool I'm safe by grumpy-cowboy · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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    Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
  5. The Chinese are not the good guys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:The Chinese are not the good guys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  6. No evidence, no proof, no oversight by Tokolosh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
    1. Re:No evidence, no proof, no oversight by Type44Q · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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)