Huawei row: UK to let Chinese firm help build 5G network
Discussion
USA ratcheting up the pressure by forcing google to stifle the chinese empire.
Im sure the UK knew this was the way things would be going. PM May does the chummy we love huawei act so when inevitably the uk has to
comply with its US masters plans she can but on a sad sympathetic face.
Im sure the UK knew this was the way things would be going. PM May does the chummy we love huawei act so when inevitably the uk has to
comply with its US masters plans she can but on a sad sympathetic face.
I don’t get this, China manufacturers most of the Western world’s IT equipment, from wifi LED bulbs to the most sophisticated servers and network infrastructure.
If they wanted to implement snooping at a state level, they could compromise software and hardware in homes, networks and businesses with absolute ease. Why so much fuss over Huawei?
If they wanted to implement snooping at a state level, they could compromise software and hardware in homes, networks and businesses with absolute ease. Why so much fuss over Huawei?
essayer said:
I don’t get this, China manufacturers most of the Western world’s IT equipment, from wifi LED bulbs to the most sophisticated servers and network infrastructure.
If they wanted to implement snooping at a state level, they could compromise software and hardware in homes, networks and businesses with absolute ease. Why so much fuss over Huawei?
If they wanted to implement snooping at a state level, they could compromise software and hardware in homes, networks and businesses with absolute ease. Why so much fuss over Huawei?
ft said:
One of the cornerstones of the case against Huawei, as governments around the world consider whether to allow the Chinese company to build their telecoms networks, is that it is obliged by law to help China’s intelligence operations.
A number of Chinese laws state that Chinese individuals and organisations must, if asked, co-operate with intelligence work.
But Beijing has repeatedly insisted that Huawei is not obliged to help with intelligence gathering in its overseas business.
https://www.ft.com/content/282f8ca0-3be6-11e9-b72b-2c7f526ca5d0A number of Chinese laws state that Chinese individuals and organisations must, if asked, co-operate with intelligence work.
But Beijing has repeatedly insisted that Huawei is not obliged to help with intelligence gathering in its overseas business.
essayer said:
I don’t get this, China manufacturers most of the Western world’s IT equipment, from wifi LED bulbs to the most sophisticated servers and network infrastructure.
If they wanted to implement snooping at a state level, they could compromise software and hardware in homes, networks and businesses with absolute ease. Why so much fuss over Huawei?
This will be the first domino...If they wanted to implement snooping at a state level, they could compromise software and hardware in homes, networks and businesses with absolute ease. Why so much fuss over Huawei?
Fundoreen said:
USA ratcheting up the pressure by forcing google to stifle the chinese empire.
Im sure the UK knew this was the way things would be going. PM May does the chummy we love huawei act so when inevitably the uk has to
comply with its US masters plans she can but on a sad sympathetic face.
Won't be around long enough to worry about it.Im sure the UK knew this was the way things would be going. PM May does the chummy we love huawei act so when inevitably the uk has to
comply with its US masters plans she can but on a sad sympathetic face.
The fact that its on PH means its now out of the private domain of the security services and therefore not containable any more.
Just wait until the first proofs of embedded networks comes out and the extent of spying so far is revealed.
You don't have a country so big and controlling of their own population stop at their own borders.
Just wait until the first proofs of embedded networks comes out and the extent of spying so far is revealed.
You don't have a country so big and controlling of their own population stop at their own borders.
Getragdogleg said:
The fact that its on PH means its now out of the private domain of the security services and therefore not containable any more.
Just wait until the first proofs of embedded networks comes out and the extent of spying so far is revealed.
You don't have a country so big and controlling of their own population stop at their own borders.
Thought Australia had proved that with their own NHS/ Hua Spying ringJust wait until the first proofs of embedded networks comes out and the extent of spying so far is revealed.
You don't have a country so big and controlling of their own population stop at their own borders.
The "no Huawei or we won't share intelligence" stuff coming out of the USA is embarrassingly silly, but that's par for the course with the current administration. It's hardly like they're the great purveyor of all signals intelligence. They'd be cutting their own noses off.
5G is just another peripheral layer on top of the internet. It gets your traffic on and off the internet; that's all. So why fixate about someone providing 5G kit when thinking about sharing intelligence?
The transfer of secure data across the internet is based on encryption, not privacy. If you are sending secure data across the internet you must assume that anyone can inspect the entire data transfer. The whole bleeding point is that you encrypt the data so that they can't make sense of it. You can stream your data through a Chinese controlled switch and they still can't read it. If you can't guarantee data is encrypted before it leaves your device, you must assume the data is in the public domain.
So what could Huawei actually threaten? A Huawei end-user device whose OS is hacked or has pre-installed services could be a real threat in just the same way as any compromised end-user device is. And Huawei infrastructure kit could be given a backdoor so that it can be told to misbehave at critical times, e.g. corrupt traffic, fail to deliver traffic, inject spam, again in just the same way that infrastructure kit with software vulnerabilities can be compromised. These are serious problems, but they aren't limited to Huawei or indeed to firms that are under some degree of control from State actors. If you can patch the software on a component, then that component is at risk of being hijacked regardless of which firm made it.
The current "debate" seems to be primarily a mix of moral panic about the decentralised, uncontrolled nature of the internet in general (i.e. nothing specific about 5G at all) and opportunistic, pea-brained anti-China industrial protectionism and security posturing from the White House. Added to that are quite a few uninformed, retired British spooks and generals chipping in their tuppence from the sidelines and a few Tories who are playing much the same game as the White House and banking on their audience being uninformed, which is always a contemptible position to adopt.
5G is just another peripheral layer on top of the internet. It gets your traffic on and off the internet; that's all. So why fixate about someone providing 5G kit when thinking about sharing intelligence?
The transfer of secure data across the internet is based on encryption, not privacy. If you are sending secure data across the internet you must assume that anyone can inspect the entire data transfer. The whole bleeding point is that you encrypt the data so that they can't make sense of it. You can stream your data through a Chinese controlled switch and they still can't read it. If you can't guarantee data is encrypted before it leaves your device, you must assume the data is in the public domain.
So what could Huawei actually threaten? A Huawei end-user device whose OS is hacked or has pre-installed services could be a real threat in just the same way as any compromised end-user device is. And Huawei infrastructure kit could be given a backdoor so that it can be told to misbehave at critical times, e.g. corrupt traffic, fail to deliver traffic, inject spam, again in just the same way that infrastructure kit with software vulnerabilities can be compromised. These are serious problems, but they aren't limited to Huawei or indeed to firms that are under some degree of control from State actors. If you can patch the software on a component, then that component is at risk of being hijacked regardless of which firm made it.
The current "debate" seems to be primarily a mix of moral panic about the decentralised, uncontrolled nature of the internet in general (i.e. nothing specific about 5G at all) and opportunistic, pea-brained anti-China industrial protectionism and security posturing from the White House. Added to that are quite a few uninformed, retired British spooks and generals chipping in their tuppence from the sidelines and a few Tories who are playing much the same game as the White House and banking on their audience being uninformed, which is always a contemptible position to adopt.
“Google has suspended Huawei’s access to updates of its Android operating system and chipmakers have reportedly cut off supplies to the Chinese telecoms company, after the US government added it to a trade blacklist last week.
Google said it was complying with an executive order issued by Donald Trump and was reviewing the “implications”, later adding that Google Play – through which Google allows users to download apps – and the security features of its antivirus software Google Play Protect would continue on existing Huawei devices. New versions of its smartphones outside China would lose access to popular applications and services including Google Play, Maps and the Gmail app.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/19...
Google said it was complying with an executive order issued by Donald Trump and was reviewing the “implications”, later adding that Google Play – through which Google allows users to download apps – and the security features of its antivirus software Google Play Protect would continue on existing Huawei devices. New versions of its smartphones outside China would lose access to popular applications and services including Google Play, Maps and the Gmail app.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/19...
ATG said:
So what could Huawei actually threaten?
I work in the industry, the problems are multiple. Your technical assumptions are flawed but this is not the right forum for me to type them all in.
If you own the network and the end devices it is fairly easy to extract data and to implement kill switches.
See the Russian governments ability to decrypt Skype video and audio calls in any direction without the users knowledge, no, i didn’t think it was possible either.
Not really interested in the techie bun-fight though as it misses the overall, the point i want to respond to is ‘who could they threaten?’
The answer to the question is: you and your children’s economic future.
This issue is less about encryption and more about Intellectual Property protection and protecting our economy,
Because sometimes the reactions in media are ‘muh Trump’ the bigger picture can be lost in the noise.
This move is the culmination of 5-6 years worth of work by the U.S government to slow down the rate of Intellectual Property theft by China. China needs to steal IP in order to keep their economy going.
This episode can be traced all the way back to the Nortel bankruptcy in 2012, a Canadian telecoms
company founded in 1895, that employed almost 100,000 people and was worth $380 billion.
How the company was strip mined for its IP by the Chinese is stuff of I.T geek legend. It is no coincidence that Huawei came out of the ashes of this bankruptcy with products that were 40% cheaper to fill the gap.
Japanese, French, German, Israeli companies were unable to fill this void, was it because that they lacked the talent or, was it because they did not have the expertise to suddenly re-create 25 years worth of telecoms secrets onto a zip drive ?
Seeing this unfold horrified the U.S authorities, you can’t invent a government body responsible for policing every single U.S corporate for poor security. The irony of that is not lost on me.
No, instead the U.S government changed the law which made much of what happened in the Nortel hack a criminal offence,
The U.S new trade deal would have ended much of this continuing blatant theft (i.e Chinese corporates paying bonuses for IP theft to their employees, yes - really) however, when this broke down it was clear that something needed to be done.
Obama made great strides in passing laws to get things tightened up, they worked to a certain degree and the Chinese played ball for a while but the gloves are coming off.
If you want to know why the chinese phones and telecoms gear are so great at a 40% discount know you know - its because they clone and steal other people’s technology which they did not develop themselves.
Edited by Carl_Manchester on Monday 20th May 14:16
Carl_Manchester said:
ATG said:
So what could Huawei actually threaten?
I work in the industry, the problems are multiple. Your technical assumptions are flawed but this is not the right forum for me to type them all in.
If you own the network and the end devices it is fairly easy to extract data and to implement kill switches.
See the Russian governments ability to decrypt Skype video and audio calls in any direction without the users knowledge, no, i didn’t think it was possible either.
Not really interested in the techie bun-fight though as it misses the overall, the point i want to respond to is ‘who could they threaten?’
The answer to the question is: you and your children’s economic future.
This issue is less about encryption and more about Intellectual Property protection and protecting our economy,
Because sometimes the reactions in media are ‘muh Trump’ the bigger picture can be lost in the noise.
This move is the culmination of 5-6 years worth of work by the U.S government to slow down the rate of Intellectual Property theft by China. China needs to steal IP in order to keep their economy going.
This episode can be traced all the way back to the Nortel bankruptcy in 2012, a Canadian telecoms
company founded in 1895, that employed almost 100,000 people and was worth $380 billion.
How the company was strip mined for its IP by the Chinese is stuff of I.T geek legend. It is no coincidence that Huawei came out of the ashes of this bankruptcy with products that were 40% cheaper to fill the gap.
Japanese, French, German, Israeli companies were unable to fill this void, was it because that they lacked the talent or, was it because they did not have the expertise to suddenly re-create 25 years worth of telecoms secrets onto a zip drive ?
Seeing this unfold horrified the U.S authorities, you can’t invent a government body responsible for policing every single U.S corporate for poor security. The irony of that is not lost on me.
No, instead the U.S government changed the law which made much of what happened in the Nortel hack a criminal offence,
The U.S new trade deal would have ended much of this continuing blatant theft (i.e Chinese corporates paying bonuses for IP theft to their employees, yes - really) however, when this broke down it was clear that something needed to be done.
Obama made great strides in passing laws to get things tightened up, they worked to a certain degree and the Chinese played ball for a while but the gloves are coming off.
If you want to know why the chinese phones and telecoms gear are so great at a 40% discount know you know - its because they clone and steal other people’s technology which they did not develop themselves.
Edited by Carl_Manchester on Monday 20th May 14:16
Intellectual property theft has nothing to do with the security integrity of 5G.
By all means say "I want to protect the economy from the Chinese. I want to punish them for failing to protect IP. I therefore want to keep stop Western companies buying Huawei kit,"
But don't claim it's because of legitimate security concerns that aren't intrinsic to damn nearly all the other kit that currently forms the backbone of the internet.
And you can't get away with saying that I'm making technically flawed assumptions, but that this isn't the place to discuss that and anyway you're not interested in the techie bunfight (what techie bunfight??). If I've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, please feel free to point out where. Doing so does not constitute a bunfight. I'm happy to be corrected. I'm not familiar with the Russian Skype interception you mention, but you say "If you own the network and the end devices it is fairly easy to extract data", and with respect that is completely obvious. The key bit is "if you own the end devices". They're the bits of kit that have the unencrypted data on them. That's implicit in my original post.
Coolbanana said:
Terminator X said:
This is a tad different to buying a phone made in China though?
TX.
They don't just make phones...if China used Foxconn to spy, they would already be deeply embedded given they make much of all electronic devices, regardless of 5G tech in the form of antennae's etc from Huawei. TX.
Now, if a Chinese company wanted to supply the core infrastructure for 5G, then that would be a whole new ball-game, obviously. However, while unconfirmed, the Report believes non-core components only, so no different to what we already have in most homes already.
Edited by Coolbanana on Wednesday 24th April 14:34
ATG said:
intellectual property theft has nothing to do with the security integrity of 5G.
By all means say "I want to protect the economy from the Chinese. I want to punish them for failing to protect IP. I therefore want to keep stop Western companies buying Huawei kit,"
Both points are linked i am just joining the dots. You are incorrect on the first point. By all means say "I want to protect the economy from the Chinese. I want to punish them for failing to protect IP. I therefore want to keep stop Western companies buying Huawei kit,"
If all information traverses a network, emails, voice, video, files. If you have control over that network at the hardware and software layers and also the devices at either end it enables the potential for systemic collection of data for Intellectual Property theft.
This was clearly demonstrated through the mass surveillance and destruction of Nortel by the Chinese Government or agents of such.
the FBI demonstrated in 2000 and 2005 that it was possible with the Carnivore and NaurusInsight programmes to do this on a mass scale, even without control of the endpoints, all you need is the correct level of network access. The guy who designed them both left for the CIA to be the head of its science and tech division.
In terms of punishing Huawei, I have little doubt that the destruction of Nortel and the Halo hung around Huawei is little more than a grand Chinese plan to compromise the foundational security of the five eyes system.
If you compromise one, you can compromise them all.
For this reason, Huawei needs to be reined in, we can’t bankrupt them but we can level the playing field and bravo to the USA for giving them a kick in the gonads.
Carl_Manchester said:
ATG said:
intellectual property theft has nothing to do with the security integrity of 5G.
By all means say "I want to protect the economy from the Chinese. I want to punish them for failing to protect IP. I therefore want to keep stop Western companies buying Huawei kit,"
Both points are linked i am just joining the dots. You are incorrect on the first point. By all means say "I want to protect the economy from the Chinese. I want to punish them for failing to protect IP. I therefore want to keep stop Western companies buying Huawei kit,"
If all information traverses a network, emails, voice, video, files. If you have control over that network at the hardware and software layers and also the devices at either end it enables the potential for systemic collection of data for Intellectual Property theft.
This was clearly demonstrated through the mass surveillance and destruction of Nortel by the Chinese Government or agents of such.
the FBI demonstrated in 2000 and 2005 that it was possible with the Carnivore and NaurusInsight programmes to do this on a mass scale, even without control of the endpoints, all you need is the correct level of network access. The guy who designed them both left for the CIA to be the head of its science and tech division.
In terms of punishing Huawei, I have little doubt that the destruction of Nortel and the Halo hung around Huawei is little more than a grand Chinese plan to compromise the foundational security of the five eyes system.
If you compromise one, you can compromise them all.
For this reason, Huawei needs to be reined in, we can’t bankrupt them but we can level the playing field and bravo to the USA for giving them a kick in the gonads.
If you have control of the devices that encrypt and decrypt data, then of course you've got access to the plaintext; you literally hold the keys. Having control of the network makes no difference. MI6 could fax encrypted data to the Kremlin and ask them to forward it to the CIA. Without the keys, the Kremlin can't decrypt the data. They can choose not to forward it, they can doodle on it. They can't read it.
ATG said:
You're continuing to jumble up completely unrelated things. The FBI were performing traffic analysis on bulk flow of data across the internet. Could allowing Huawei to provide kit for 5G allow them to do the same? No. Why? Because 5G kit just gets data in small cells on and off the internet; it doesn't provide core bandwidth and routing of the internet. The traffic analysis they could perform could be conducted by anyone with an aerial in the same location.
If you have control of the devices that encrypt and decrypt data, then of course you've got access to the plaintext; you literally hold the keys. Having control of the network makes no difference. MI6 could fax encrypted data to the Kremlin and ask them to forward it to the CIA. Without the keys, the Kremlin can't decrypt the data. They can choose not to forward it, they can doodle on it. They can't read it.
Have a look at Huawei and Cisco lawsuit the core routers have the ability to off load traffic, hence the core is key, also in 5G the radio and edge are not the same as now, the ability of companies to look into data packets is worrying, however it is just a case of who do you let steal/inspect your traffic.If you have control of the devices that encrypt and decrypt data, then of course you've got access to the plaintext; you literally hold the keys. Having control of the network makes no difference. MI6 could fax encrypted data to the Kremlin and ask them to forward it to the CIA. Without the keys, the Kremlin can't decrypt the data. They can choose not to forward it, they can doodle on it. They can't read it.
All encryption algorithms are within 3GPP specs.
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