Slashdot Mirror
'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
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?
How many times is Slashdot going to run this story?
As many as is necessary. Maybe some decision maker somewhere will think twice before getting in bed with china.
Right africa? How's your chinese masters treating you?
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
... 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.
Who was it that just lost a shipping port to china essentially by foreclosure?
Of course in the U.S., China just buys them.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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?
Obviously better than their American masters since they decided to go from America to China.
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)."
Really, really?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Obviously better than their American masters since they decided to go from America to China.
You're thinking of the UK. The USA doens't quite play in the African region.
China's building roads, schools, etc. in africa. And while on the surface that looks "good," it'll blow up in Africa's face.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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/
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/
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.
Until it sinks in?
I see what you did there. Umbridge sends her regards.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
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"
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.
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.
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"
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.
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 live in a western country, and I'm not planning to visit either China or the US. If China spies on me, nothing will happen with any of the gathered info. If the US spies on me, this info MIGHT be shared with my country's secret services. I'm slightly safer with China spying on me than with the US spying on me.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
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.
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.