Huawei's Equipment Poses 'Significant' Security Risks, UK Says (cnbc.com)

The U.K. government warned on Thursday Huawei's telecommunications equipment raises "significant" security issues, posing a possible setback to the Chinese tech firm as it looks to build out 5G networks. From a report: In 46-page report evaluating Huawei's security risks, British officials stopped short of calling for a ban of Huawei's 5G telecommunications equipment. But the assessment cited "underlying defects" in the company's software engineering and cybersecurity processes, citing "significantly increased risk to U.K. operators." The findings give weight to warnings from U.S. officials who have argued Huawei's networking equipment could be used for espionage by the Chinese government. Huawei has repeatedly said it does not pose any risk and insists it would not share customer data with Beijing. In a statement Thursday, Huawei said it takes the U.K. government's findings "very seriously."

Comments

Le sigh....

[Syphonius]

And it continues. Even if Huawei earnestly means that they won't collaborate with Beijing, when your engineering security is so lax then it seems reasonable to expect that Beijing will find ways to make use of it (just like any other large government would).

It's just another example of corporate balances not finding a decent center for security versus productivity and profit. We all still have a long way to go.

Another explanation

[Okian Warrior]

And it continues. Even if Huawei earnestly means that they won't collaborate with Beijing, when your engineering security is so lax then it seems reasonable to expect that Beijing will find ways to make use of it (just like any other large government would).

It's just another example of corporate balances not finding a decent center for security versus productivity and profit. We all still have a long way to go.

With all this calling out of Huwei, it sounds suspiciously like the US security agencies found a specific back-door planted in the products, want to alert everyone to the issue, but also don't want to make the vulnerability public so they can use it for themselves.

Re:Another explanation

[AmiMoJo]

Nah, it sounds like Huawei holds most of the patents on 5G infrastructure and is years ahead of everyone else getting hardware to market. So now all the US companies that make similar equipment are losing contracts to Huawei, so the government decided to help them out by raising some "security concerns".

It's the least they could do after the NSA was caught red handed systematically backdooring Cisco hardware.