7 ms·
I dread to think of all the state-funded technology companies with backdoor-ed firmware/software coming out of China
by thinking001001 4y ago
I dread to think of all the state-funded technology companies with backdoor-ed firmware/software coming out of China
- sschueller 4y agoI don't see much difference between Chinese routers having back-doors and what Cisco has peddled to its customers all these years either willfully or just incompetence.
- horsawlarway 4y agoYeah... I would say a large part of why I'm skeptical of Chinese made computing devices is because I understand what the US has been doing with ours over the last 50 years. That said... from a national security perspective - it is still the right call to be wary of devices that are likely compromised by another nation. You should just be assuming that if you didn't make them locally (as in under your own territorial control) they are compromised during production. For everyone. Everyone should be acting with that as the default.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kazmerb 4y agoI'd rather my own government spy on me than China. I'd rather Hannibal fucking Lecter be able to see me through my webcam than China.
- sschueller 4y agoI would too but Europe sold all its companies to the US and China.
- ginko 4y agoYou know Nokia and Ericsson are still huge players in telecom technology right?
- partiallypro 4y agoNokia was sold to Microsoft, then they sold it to HMD Global Oy /FoxConn and now they make most of their goods in China, almost to the point of being white labelled. Ericsson is a small company compared to what it once was. Sure, technically European (again) but a shell of their former selves.
- demuxxed 4y agoNokia the phones are completely distinct from Nokia the telecoms infrastructure provider. HMD licenses the Nokia name from the telecoms equipment manufacturer. 3 big deals happened at Nokia. They sold the devices business to MS. They acquired the Siemens half of Nokia Siemens Networks. They acquired Alcatel Lucent (French Alcatel and American descendant of Bell Lucent) and merged it with what was NSN. They sell every component of the modern networking stack from 5g antennas to undersea cables.
- tpmx 4y agohttps://www.lightreading.com/5g/ericssons-market-share-has-rocketed-yet-investors-are-unhappy/d/d-id/779002 https://www.lightreading.com/5g/ericssons-market-share-has-r... Outside China, though, Ericsson now claims to serve more operators than just about any other vendor. Ekholm today put Ericsson's share of the market for radio access network (RAN) products at 39%, excluding China, telling analysts it has grown from just 33% when he took over in 2017. Fifty percent of 5G traffic outside China runs over Ericsson, he said, while 16 of the world's top 20 operators are using its 5G core.
- tsimionescu 4y agoYour own government has a much higher ability to affect your life than China does, so what you're saying is completely irrational. Not that it's OK for the Chinese to spy on us, mind you, or to claim that they don't have nefarious purposes.
- Mindless2112 4y agoYou can bring your own government to account for what it does. You can do nothing about what what China does.
- cute_boi 4y ago> You can bring your own government to account for what it does Our government is so powerful, you can't even make a dent.
- tastyfreeze 4y agoWe will see. Interesting things happening in congress this week. I'm too jaded to let myself get very hopeful about outcomes. But it does look like a dent was made with McCarthy's concessions to get confirmed as speaker.
- wizofaus 4y agoAssuming you ever find out. I don't doubt Western governments have the ability to spy on their citizens as needed, and it's likely at some point most of us have been spied on in some minor way, but unless we happened to be doing something particularly nefarious at the point it happened, very unlikely they'd bother acting on it*. Whereas I very much doubt China could see much advantage in trying to spy on an average citizen from another country at all. * unless perhaps you were applying for military clearance
- Mindless2112 4y agoBlackmail (demanding favors rather than money) and industrial espionage come to mind. https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/15/china_shenzhen_zhenhua_database/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/15/china_shenzhen_zhenhu...
- smcl 4y agoWhy, though? Your own government has far more power over you and far more reason to be interested in you than China ever would (unless you're a prominent critic of China, politically connected, or involved in military intelligence or something like that). I mean I don't want anyone spying on me, but I'm less worried about China targetting me than the Czech government (where I live) or the UK one (where I'm from).
- mikrotikker 4y agoYour own govt isn't going to sabotage its infrastructure in war with an adversary.
- smcl 4y agoOk please tell me how me personally worrying about that will protect said infrastructure in any way.
- mikrotikker 4y agoWell for one you'll be able to inform and request your local govt to avoid using Chinese equipment in infrastructure.
- mulmen 4y agoBecause in a democracy I have the ability to control my government. Far more so than if I lived under a dictatorship. > far more reason to be interested in you than China ever would I think this is naive. Psyops are real and are made more effective with knowledge of personal preference and habits. It is likely that Chinese intelligence has targeted literally everyone on the Internet in some way.
- mikrotikker 4y agoThe difference is huawei routers in the west are gathering intelligence on and setting up network to disable, western infrastructure. But Cisco in China is gathering intelligence on and setting up network to disable, chinese infrastructure. I live in the west and happen to like our infrastructure. So while I don't think Cisco should be doing what its doing, I would completely ban Chinese gear from the infrastructure be it backbone or consumer level.
- refurb 4y agoThe difference is US companies and the government isnt actively hostile towards in the way China is. Same way if i found out the UK was spying on me as an American. I wouldnt be happy, but its not the threat China is.
- billyhoffman 4y agoWhile RSA isn't a state-funded technology company, they did accept a $10M payment from the NSA to make their BSafe security product default to use the DUAL_EC_DRBG cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator. Which the NSA had designed and backdoored... https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231006/nsa-paid-10-million-for-a-back-door-into-rsa-encryption-according-to https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231006/nsa-paid-10-mill...
- XorNot 4y agoAre the primary sources on this story from the Snowden leaks available somewhere? Even the article here points to another Reuters article which isn't available any more, and I've never been able to find out which documents people were referencing about this?
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y agoCheck the torrents?
- supriyo-biswas 4y agohttps://hyperelliptic.org/tanja/vortraege/20140506.pdf https://hyperelliptic.org/tanja/vortraege/20140506.pdf contains excerpts from the original article. Also searching for “Project Bullrun” brings up various articles on the Dual EC DRBG attacks.
- localplume 4y ago[flagged]
- throwingrocks 4y agoI imagine this comment is relevant somehow.
- sph 4y agoI still remember an article on here of a person trying to get access to their Huawei router with a JTAG or something, and once inside after looking around they said en passant "weird, there is a user here with a preconfigured ssh authorized_keys file. LOL must be a backdoor, am I right?" and just moved on with no further mention of this, as did the HN comments. I still think about it. EDIT: found my astonished comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22694150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22694150