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'You Need To Be Very, Very Cautious': US Warns European Allies Not To Use Chinese Gear For 5G Networks (reuters.com)
The United States sees the European Union as its top priority in a global effort to convince allies not to buy Huawei equipment for next-generation mobile networks, a U.S. State Department Official said on Tuesday. From a report: After meetings with the European Commission and the Belgian government in Brussels, U.S. officials are set to take a message to other European capitals that the world's biggest telecommunications gear maker poses a security risk, said the official, who declined to be named. "We are saying you need to be very, very cautious and we are urging folks not to rush ahead and sign contracts with untrusted suppliers from countries like China," the official said. The United States fears China could use the equipment for espionage -- a concern that Huawei Technologies says is unfounded. The push to sideline Huawei in Europe, one of its biggest markets, is likely to deepen trade frictions between Washington and Beijing.
Or rather the whole world, when the NSA accidentally loses its access credentials and they end up being generally available.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If the administration wants our allies to listen to our opinions, perhaps it shouldn’t be so hellbent on insulting and alienating them?
Just a thought.
#DeleteChrome
How many times is Slashdot going to run this story?
CITATION REQUIRED
be Wary Wary qwiet.
What's up doc?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
China is not their friend. They are a Communist Dictatorship and they will behave like a Communist Dictatorship.
You don't have to be best pals with anyone to remind them of this.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Using some 'special sauce' embedded in the kit being used in their exchanges/comms centers. The media was of course lapping this up and waving it about at the time.
Awfully quiet now though. So yes, the US does exactly this as it has already been let out of the bag given they did it in iraq. Now they're worried about someone else doing it too? Yes we should be worried. We should (EU) also start asking questions about the US kit as well. Does this also extend to their planes that the EU buys, and ordnance? What about power generation kit? All that SCADA stuff (though to be honest you don't need a kill switch in scada, it's fucking awful for security)
. . . nothing except money. Lots of it.
What/who are the the other options? I don't have a really good idea of how this space's offerings breaks down along country lines.
perhaps it shouldn’t be so hellbent on insulting and alienating them?
To date, they US has only been able to offer hand-waves and "boogeymen!" as a reason to not buy Huawei. In other words, "the US compromises network equipment all the time, so those other guys probably do too and they're not us." As reasoning goes, that ranks right up there with "stop hitting yourself".
From TFA:
They seem to conveniently forget the vulnerabilities introduced in not-so-older networks by the NSA and their ilk.
Sounds familiar. Dubya and cronies? Non-existent weapons? Justification to kill a bunch of people for the crime of not being American in someplace outside America? Ringing any bells?
The US government and other governments over whom they hold sway (the schoolyard bully's "allies"/sycophants) have proven that they cannot be trusted.
You can keep your threats regarding your childish trade wars to yourselves, fascists (aka neocunts).
... to intensify the development of domestic IT equipment. The European Processor Initiative is one step in such direction. These messages from Trump's administration only reinforce such idea.
Said the NSA guy.
could fill a book, but short summary - the US does not need backdoors. The US is procuring network hardware hopefully without backdoors. The NSA operates throughout the network either way, but does not rely on backdoored switches.
They have physical access and the (extremely compelling) FISA laws. China needs backdoors.
If you have evidence of "NSA backdoored" routers or switches in the US market, please do share. Otherwise it's FUD. AKA lying.
Could someone, perhaps a willing-to-be-named government official, provide us (technical wizards) with any repeatable proof that Huawei devices 'phone home' to deliver our private information. Or should be just blindly trust our own governments?
The USA spooks are so worried because that's exactly what they're doing to us with US tech.
because so far that's the only thing that's definitely been proven to be backdoored and riddled with spyware multiple times. The U.S. would love to have a kill-switch and a way to spy and sabotage if they decide it's needed, of course this is the reason they don't want the world to buy from Huawei.
The EU can buy Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, or ZTE, it's all fine, but they should stay the hell away from U.S. equipment at any cost.
If there's one country proven not to be trusted, than it's the US. Don't buy US network gear as it's proven to have (had) backdoors for NSA.. So what gear can we trust now?
Trump please. This is just another US/China trade tactic. Tell the world that Huawai gear is going to spy on you, so nobody buys the Huawai gear. ANY Huawai gear. Or any Chinese gear. And then the chinese electronics industry starts going into a downturn because the United States started a big nasty rumor that Chinese goods can't be trusted. But if China decides to start to play nicely, maybe Trump will have a bit of a change of heart with the finger pointing, and we'll call off the witch hunt and say "oops, sorry, we actually love the Chinese. See, I love eating pork fried rice, and a little Chinese woman takes the stains out of my underwear (God bless her soul)."
As if "regime change" were the real threat to end user/nation online security? You're a moron. Let's play a game. You shut up and read the first thing about this, then you spout your piece after knowing that first thing. Begin.
Really, really?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
You are called to defend China's good name with your rhetoric, comrade - remember, we have your mother in a cage above a large hot pot of soup. Make us proud, propagandist! The west can't know Huawei is a fraud tentacle! Distract!
Go forth and FUD or your family dies. Make the motherland proud, propagandists!
The Chinese will make a better offer to get the business anyway. Thanks, Trump.
Free Market Capitalism. That is to say neither of them at all represents the values the 'party' claims to espouse, meanwhile the mouth breathers they count as their citizenry trumpet their political platform which hasn't been true or relevant in the entire life of the entity, but especially in the recent yesterday or today.
Americans like competetive markets only if they win the sales.
We'we Huawaiing WAN bits!
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
this is kind of a sticking point for me. Not that I care much for Communism (you never get past the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" phase, too much violence and property changing hands there) but China is a basic Kleptocracy. They govern not on the principles laid out in the works of Karl Marx but on making money for the folks in power and keeping those folks in power.
The US isn't far off from being the same but we're teetering on the edge right now and can go either way. I think 2020 is going to be the tipping point, I just don't know which way we'll tip.
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It will be VERY, and I mean VERY hard to avoid the chinese in 5G rollouts.
For telecom gear, worldwide, there are only four big guys. All the other are very small players (in telco space).
Those are:
Ericsson (sweeden)
Nokia* (Finland, germany,france,US, and a little more US to boot).
Huawei (China)
ZTE (China).
Of all the 4, Huaweis is the one that has the most complete portfolio for 5G things.
Al the other players are rather small, say samsung with some basestations and optical telecom gear, NEC with some switches.
Having said that, mobile operators would be dumb to depend on one provider alone, and rarely do.
Mobile Operators have certain strategies in place since the dawn of time to mitigate this type of risk.
For example, in RF you divide the country, say 70-30, 60-40 or 50-25-25 (depending of the size of the country) and assign each region to a different basestation provider. If one of those providers drops the ball (say, by spying on you), you eject them with prejudice. This can also be done in other access technologies, like the DSLAMs in de case of ADSL/VDSL/G.fast. Telefonica/Movistar is one of the operators that does this.
Other Example, Some operators have what they call provider uniformity in different layers, so, for example, British Telecom uses Huawei gear in the optical transport layer (DWDM). As soon as they bought EE, they ripped all Huawei Switches from the mobile network (of course, they also ripped also all optical equipment that was not Huawei, and replaced it with Huawei equipment). Since all the data is encripted end-to-end, good luck with the optical equipment doing much spying.
Other techniques exist. So, if an operator (or a country) are concerned about "Chinese Spying", they may as well use chinese gear only in the areas less succeptible to spying. That way you get all the advantages of chinese providers (low cost, easy mass deployment), and lessen the impact on security.
I have to say that, in general, the more sucess Huawei and ZTE had in the international scene, the less spying they do. Anecdoticaly, the last case I heard about was in the late 00's or early 10's (can remember exactly), when some guys with some operator in LatAm caught a mobile switch beaconing china. A big hoopla ensued, Huawei profusely appologized, swore, crossed their hearts and hope to die never to do it again. Those switches were put under close observation for years, as well as other Huawei gear in other countries (this operator operates in multiples countries), and so far more or less a decade later, no other incidents to report... (If the non Anon Coward comentators can tell us more, jump right in. My NDA was over a few years ago, I you still are under NDA, do not post, anon or not).
As many have said, thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that the NSA and the five eyes were tampering with western gear to spy. So for many countries, in particular countries in LatAm, Asia, Africa and the middle east, you will either be spied by the 5 eyes or by the chinese, since we do not care one way or the other, let the most cost effective gear win and spay us all.
* Nokia (from finland, not japan) is the voltron of telecom, having borged Siemens telecoms arm (Germany), Alcatel(france)-Lucent(US), and the Mobile gear arm of motorola(US) (the cellphone arm went to google, and from there to lenovo, and the motorola that remain today is the goverment and emergency services comunications arm)
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
and he's the one doing the insulting. It became really clear that nobody was actually listening to him when the stock market stopped responding to his tweets.
There's only two things his tariffs have really gone after: Steel & Soybeans. As for steel a big supporter/donor of his owns steel mills, hence the steel tariffs.
I haven't figured out the grift on soybeans yet, but I suspect somebody on this forum can find it for us and post below.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Remember when all major companies have been helping with federal government to spy on the world?
I don't necessarily "agree" with the sanctions in all cases but the Iran sanctions are the law and for "some" substantiated reasons, we're not debating the merits of sanctions. We're debating whether Huawei violated them, the law.
And they did. And they committed corporate fraud to do so, while doing business with the US, and with officers traveling into and out of US jurisdiction. So evidence that they were willing to commit fraud to violate US law, check.
Now you want to say "I hate the US foreign policy" and I, as an American, one of the relative few who read, can be right there with you on that - but it's not the point of discussion at the moment.
Huawei is a spying tentacle of the Chinese Communist party. If the Democrats/Republicans had a networking company guilty of multiple frauds, I'd ALSO say don't buy their shit!
Most stuff is and then at best it's assembled in the country to avoid tariffs. Kudos to them if they can do it though.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What is this nonsense? Huawei is considered a trusted supplier.
Their network gear is in widespread use especially in service provider networks.
Others, such as Cisco.... however, seem more questionable. Long track record of crash bugs and vulnerabilities on certain sw; some reported cases of compromised equipment doing nefarious stuff -- serious past vulnerabilities, including the ability to present malicious browser code and credential capture from certain (ASA) firewall devices in the VPN functionality, etc.
The current President of the United States of America described the EU as his country's "biggest foe globally". Why would one dispense advice to a foe? The US might as well counsel their new allies, such as Putin, who went to great lengths to help their current President get elected.
The United States are known to lie to their allies in order to promote their national interests, and for this reason their word has no value. Besides, they were caught doing exactly what they are now accusing the Chinese of: by preferring US gear to Chinese gear, Europe would be exchanging possible espionage with certain espionage.
"Huawei is considered a trusted supplier." = Bullshit. Huawei is a 5-time caught fraudulent code thief, espionage source, and corporate fraud law evader - NOT TO MENTION WHOLLY OWNED BY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT.
Cisco is a random counter-example, but whatever you'll say about them, they don't try to commit corporate fraud and then escape US legal jurisdiction, they have lawyers and assets in this country for that reason.
China has no such commitment to law and certainly not trustworthy computing. You'd have to be a complete moron to conflate the two.
Clinton N1gger Network is your source? Are you fucking retarded?
Yes, use only 4G gear to prevent irradiation.
4G has advantages.
1. It's readily available
2. It's cheap
3. It doesn't kill you.
Hark, your racist is showing
Yes. Id rather have america spy on me than china.
"Snowden's documents do not contain technical information on exact cryptanalytic capabilities because Snowden did not have clearance access to such information"
Gee, so you're going on the GCHQ sales brochure's loose aphorisms, then moron? You have no idea who was targeted or what/where exactly this was, but it WAS LEGALLY AUTHORIZED for specific targets.
Go figure you try to muddy and conflate completely different things because you don't understand or have the intellectual curiosity to look into glaring differences.
No, the fact that you failed to prove the NSA was responsible for D-link's incompetence isn't anyone "defending" the NSA. That's defending the factual record.
I wouldn't expect a pro-China fraud to understand or agree with the factual record, no. You can fuck off at your convenience, it doesn't affect the facts at all.
The EU nations only look at the cost of the generations of tech AC.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Collect it all and junk crypto collects on everyone AC. Domestically and globally.
Everyone gets the junk approved big brand crypto ready for the security services to collect on.
Junk crypto sold to all is not "specific".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You have no idea what you're blathering about. They don't accomplish that via backdoored consumer device platforms, they control the pipes and understand where the weak points are. You're a moron, not an informed source.
You have no idea about any of this and you think you're smart just spouting bullshit like "the EU nations only look at the cost" - what a dumbass thing to blurt out from nothing.
You're a moron.
Huawei could likely do well by shipping clean hardware with open specifications, and allow their customer base to write the software.
Some might use Linux kernels for maximum functionality. Some might use various BSDs for security. Some might be ornery and choose ReactOS.
Microsoft had a chance with Edge, but they kept the source code secret. Huawei should not make this mistake.
Accused, charged or actually found guilty? Because until someone has their day in court, not of that other stuff means shit.
Something about a Constitution, rule of law, etc, etc. It's why we consider ourselves as being better than them.
Maybe. A way to find out would be if there was a more cost effective solution, maybe from the US. And the EU would be going for that instead of investing in Huawei hardware.
Given how the EU operates on an economic basis however they would urge private corporations to buy from domestic suppliers. Because that's what the EU does, it subsidizes its own brands to protect them against competitors from China or the US. And it also tends to ensure that people buy mostly domestic products wherever it is possible. After all that is what creates or secures jobs there which bring taxes that are enforceable because all the assets of the people are within the jurisdiction of those nations. Of course as a bonus this brings voters. And there are corporations within the EU that are capable of deploying this technology. There is also plenty of cybersecurity oriented corporations available within the EU.
It'll cost more, but since those corporations are under EU jurisdiction, they could have a lot more control over that hardware than any Chinese product. That would be the best for them if they wanted to implement their backdoors. The Chinese prices must be really good for the EU not to care. Or there may be some other reason for this.
Sure both do dubious spying, and the USA is not perfect.
But the USA really is the land of the free compared to China. Try to express any political opinion in China and you will be penalized and end up in jail if you persist.
China has a aggressive foreign policy, with explicit eyes on Taiwan. That is quite different from the USA's bumbling incompetence in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they would love to be able to leave.
That said, I would be considering Ericson.
I have an easy solution. Just engineer in encryption into it, so that the low layers can't get at anything that interesting.
AC its just about the lower price and extra settings that China provides for the low price that draws in the EU nations telco brands.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
AC the NSA and GCHQ wanted voice prints. That needs direct access to all levels of telco crypto.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Yeah, no shit. It used to be $1.05 but due to our sky high inflation it's a fucking buck forty.
Exactly. These morons want to claim "Aha, a backdooooor!" is proof the NSA is behind it. They wouldn't apply that same constructionalism to Russia or China, because... wait for it... they're SHILLING TRAITOR FAGGOTS OF NO VALUE!
You're a blathering moron, not an informed source on any level or topic to date.
Stop. Lying. Retarded. Faggot.
You have no idea about any of this and you think you're smart just spouting bullshit like "the EU nations only look at the cost" - what a dumbass thing to blurt out from nothing. Stop lying dumbass.
We can physically SEE that you aren't smart enough to be a party in this discussion.
Go try and apply that ideal in China. We'll wait moron.
AC,
Huxley is an idiot, and you obviously have some knowledge.
But, for all that you know, s/he is a Chinese/Russian agent.
So, STFU.
Hats off to AHuxely for staying civil.
I, on the other hand, am more direct.
AC, you are a raging asshole. And that single fact overshadows any other point you may have been trying to make.
Disappointed by the rest of the discussion, but maybe there was some good stuff and my keyword searches failed to find it. These days I'm expecting the moderation to fail (though I also checked the moderated categories).
However, in addition to the presence of DRAM that is not backed up against power outages I did think of one more general category of features the hardware should have. I'm sure there are others, but...
The premise of the DRAM idea is that you (the spy) want the spyware to vanish easily, but that implies you need to be able to install and reinstall it relatively easily. Assuming (dangerously) that you have installed it correctly the first time and in the correct place, then you would want to make sure you don't reinstall it again if that time and place has changed, for example because someone has gotten suspicious and moved the device into a more controlled environment. Therefore the hardware should include some capabilities to help confirm where the device is or that nothing about the environment has changed BEFORE the spyware is restored (after it has erased itself for any reason). Some sort of special diagnostic routines at power on?
Is the solution too obvious?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
If you have actual evidence that Chinese devices are spying on us, I suggest you make it available. Otherwise keep your ugly traps shut.
By the way, how's that "innocent until proven guilty" thing working out for you :-)
State subsidy is state aid and officially banned within the EU, although there are some workarounds.
I am not sure what you mean by 'the EU' here anyway. The EU Parliament is relatively weak, although the President, elected by it, has some power. The main power lies in the Council of Ministers, so in the collective will of the constituent states.
I pity anyone on the face of the Earth who is too brain damaged to not realize the US government are hypocrites the likes of which may never be seen again in a another billion years of human history.
"They have weapons of mass destruction!" (Please ignore our 1000's and 1000's of nuclear missiles)
"They have chemical weapons!" (We know because they bought them off us)
"Those people are evil terrorists!" (We don't bother counting the innocent civilians we kill. We just call them "collateral damage")
"Those people are breaking international law!" (We've been ignoring international laws that don't suit us for many decades)
"Their equipment allows them to spy on you!" (Please pretend you don't already know we've been spying on you the whole time)
etc. etc. etc.
Use whatever euphemism you want for those workarounds there, but that is what is happening.
They are usually protecting their own economy and brands against foreign ones that would diminish the money they're making from their own industries.
There's nothing really surprising about this. Every other big economy does a similar thing.
The US cares for itself first. China cares for itself first. Why wouldn't the EU do the same to stay afloat?
Just because of some noble ideals, like environmentalism, that are out there?
When I talk of the EU it mean all of its governmental branches and individual state governments. Their interests aren't always in line, but there often is a consensus as far as strengthening the single market goes.
Remember that the EU is primarily an economical union between various nation states and for that greater economic good the governmental bodies of the EU let a lot of things slide for their own members, where they would be more rigorous against outsiders they're less dependent on.
That is one of the reasons they'd rather keep Poland and Hungary inside the union instead of having them join some other union.
One of the reasons why the EU will be as belligerent as possible concerning Brexit. While I'd be willing to bet money that if the UK remained inside the EU, the rest of the EU would let the UK deviate even more than Poland or Hungary.
Spying wouldn't matter here if everything going in and out of the 5G network was anonymized and encrypted. This is among the strongest cases I've heard for strong encryption.
In before whistleblower reveals US backdoors into non Chinese hardwares, rationalizes it with "we had to because they were doing it, dont you want to be SAFE"
There is no way this isn't a thing. Absolutely zero possibility.
i guess you can "fuzz" software but has anyone bothered to "fuzz" hardware? ...?
a simple example would be a switch that is subjected to varying voltages whilst changing the input from straight-thru to crossover all inside a second and then maybe in periods etc etc
i suppose it would be too expensive to make it "hardware fuzz" prove?
the grid, climate and the sun "hardware fuzzes" gear all the time, as we know ^_^
Tou know, kinda like this?
Facebook Ordered To Stop Combining WhatsApp and Instagram Data Without Consent in Germany; Company Says It Needs That Data To Fight Terrorism and Child Abuse
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
It is not because his brain is damaged but because his brain is washed. And the US government will continue to make sure people's brains are washed through skillful PR and marketing trickery.
You are missing the point. I could literally not care less whether the exploit was added at the factory by the manufacturer or deployed afterwards using detailed knowledge of the device gleaned from the manufacturer or by hiring their engineers. I also don't care whether it was entirely legal under the laws of whatever foreign country did it - if Huawei's equipment is compromised I am sure that is 100% legal in China. What I care about is that my equipment has been compromised and whatever information passes through it can be seen by a foreign government.
While there is nothing I work on that I would be worried about a foreign government seeing (most of it is destined for public, open-access scientific journals) it is incredibly disingenuous for the US government to tell others to not use a Chinese company's equipment because it _might_ be compromised when we know that a US company's equipment can almost certainly be compromised. If I am going to end up with compromised equipment I might as well buy the cheapest/best performing stuff.