Considering that one can purchase a zero day exploit in pretty much any piece of network equipment for ~$50k, I don't see how these 'national security' claims hold up.<p>For a government who wants to spy, the difference between inserting your own exploit in a piece of equipment and paying $50k to find an existing exploit is insignificant.<p>Using an existing exploit is preferable anyway, because then it's harder to trace the origins of the exploit back to you.
Recently we had a situation in New Zealand where a large telco announced Huawei would provide their 5G kit for the entire network, then days later had to retract because the national intelligence agency barred the deal [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12167798" rel="nofollow">https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&...</a>
Not directly related to the story, but just for info - "British Telecom" is an incorrect name (it's not used in the BBC article). The company renamed from that to BT in 1991.
> Huawei denies having any ties to the Chinese government beyond those of being a law-abiding taxpayer.<p>I find it interesting that these kinds of verbal games are continually played out in the public eye despite everyone involved knowing exactly what's going on. And that goes for all APT / nation-state actors.
The problem is that Huawei kit does not have GCHQ/NSA backdoor capabilities. Hence it has to be banished.<p>The story has not changed since five years ago:<p><a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/25/huawei_responds_to_spying_allegations/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/25/huawei_responds_to_...</a><p>It would be commercial suicide for Huawei to have backdoored their export products. For the Chinese domestic market they may have 'Great Firewall' extras to them but for export products it simply makes no business sense.<p>There is zero evidence in the public domain to support the hysterical allegations of the crazy folks in our domestic military-industrial-espionage complex.<p>In former times there was this quaint notion of innocent until proven guilty. It is time we grow up a bit and stop slandering our Chinese friends. Xenophobia has never helped.<p>Edit: Instead of downvoting, please explain the flaws in my comment, whether they be based on unsubstantiated claims, tone of voice or just personal grudge. Thank-you.
So <i>something</i> has changed, because there used to be a weird little collaboration/supervision operation going on between BT, Huawei, and UK Intelligence at Martlesham Heath.<p><a href="https://www.eadt.co.uk/business/martlesham-heath-huawei-pledges-to-invest-370m-in-superfast-5g-mobile-network-1-2972789" rel="nofollow">https://www.eadt.co.uk/business/martlesham-heath-huawei-pled...</a>
Edit: UK outage vendor confirmed as Ericsson: <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-o2telefonica-outages/ericsson-software-glitch-hits-mobile-services-in-britain-and-japan-idUKKBN1O51I2" rel="nofollow">https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-o2telefonica-outages/erics...</a><p>Old paranoia filled post left below for reference. Thanks to saaaaaam for pointing the above link out.<p>----<p>There's something going on here, political or technical.<p>O2/Telefonica subcontracted out a lot of their core to Huawei in 2012 [1]. Literally today, after their CFO was arrested in Canada [2], we've been hit with a massive telecoms outage here in the UK which has taken out data / SMS. O2 have stated that it's due to one of their technology provider's software [3].<p>Edit: Giffgaff (virtual provider) have also stated that this is a global problem which is even more worrying [4]<p>I hope this is a coincidence.<p>We've had data down here in UK from 0500 to 14:00 so far...<p>China stock is falling, this happened, Huawei already have a somewhat iffy reputation and now BT is throwing out news about jumping ship from them suddenly.<p>[1] <a href="http://telecoms.com/44197/huawei-wins-managed-services-deal-with-o2-uk/" rel="nofollow">http://telecoms.com/44197/huawei-wins-managed-services-deal-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46465768" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46465768</a><p>[3] <a href="https://twitter.com/O2/status/1070612301110226944" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/O2/status/1070612301110226944</a><p>[4] <a href="https://twitter.com/giffgaff/status/1070674248606339072" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/giffgaff/status/1070674248606339072</a>
> still plans to use the Chinese company's phone mast antennas and other products deemed not to be at the "core" of the service.<p>So apparently phone masts aren't "core" to a _phone network_?
> However, critics point out that its founder, Ren Zhengfei, was a former engineer in the country's army and joined the Communist Party in 1978. There are also questions about how independent of state influence any large Chinese company can be.<p>Is this really the best they can come up with? I've never heard any more specific accusations, in any media. Sounds pretty racist.<p>(I have seen specific accusations that Huawei is violating sanctions, but that is a separate concern from national security in infrastructure.)
Seems like they started fight with Huawei via non-market means. Does it mean its actually a successful hardware company, threatening Apple/Samsung dominance?<p>As for fears, they could mandate open source with reproducible builds for all security critical infrastructure hardware.