Huawei: unlike western companies, we've never been told to weaken our security

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It has been mentioned before, their security is very poor in general. Backdoors are not really needed when you can pretty easily get in the front door.

If you want to get an idea of what real hacking is like, this long video goes into great detail on how to crack one series of Huawei router.

Someone says they got some proof of some sort of threat? Okay. Then put up. Or shut up.

Umm… ok:

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Word @TacoChucks - furthermore it’s a pretty good rule of thumb to assume it’s got backdoors because even if they haven’t been asked to put them in, they put them in there anyway for the Chinese Government or their own sneaky access. I’m sure Huawei’s got a few Joels of its own.

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Exactly. Most Chinese companies are willing hostages to a system. Stockholm anyone?

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Companies being made up of people, it seems like it might be a really good idea for the highly paid eschelon to try and stay on the governments good side http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/why-do-chinese-billionaires-keep-ending-up-in-prison/272633/

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When Stalinist nations force people to register photocopy machines to track documents, that’s seen as a feature of their ideology. When capitalist countries embed ID codes in yellow dots on their laser printer documents, that’s just good business sense.

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“We just did it without asking”

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I’ve used a chinese cell phone for a while. And while I have no indication there are any backdoors in it, I still assume there are. But it’s a pretty decent phone, I’ll give them that much.

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It’s possible (and IMO likely) that all these are true simultaneously:

  1. Chinese intelligence/security has been as alert to opportunities in Huawei’s (and ZTE’s) growth as its US counterpart has been to global use of Western hardware and Internet systems technology

  2. Huawei’s market penetration – a timeworn, aggressive and successful “start with cheap commodity products and move up the food chain” trajectory – would have been much the same with or without (1)

  3. Huawei’s Western competitors, and their friends in Congress, have seen competitive advantage in raising doubts about Yellow Peril Hardware, and would have done so with or without evidence.

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What cell phones aren’t Chinese?

Well, there are just a few. If you mean to exclude mainland China, then HTC (Taiwan) and most Blackberries.

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It’s not Stockholm, just plain old XIX/XX-century nationalism.

These shenanigans remind me a lot of '80s efforts to protect US companies from Japanese manufacturers. “Unreliable quality! Foreign influence! Evil ideology!” It’s just a game of old-school protectionism.

Behind the scenes, as Snowden proved, everyone is spying everyone anyway, without going to the trouble of requiring fancy backdoors that would be a liability if discovered.

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Or just out-and-out lying. People other than the NSA do that, too.

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Well, Samsung, Nokia…but pretty much everything is made in China. Or are HTCs not?

“And remember, our white tuna is guaranteed not to turn pink in the can!”

HTC is a Taiwanese company. You can rest assured that none of their stuff is assembled in mainland China.

That might have been a safe assumption 30 years ago, but not now. HTC has factories in China and is a major player in the Chinese mobile market.

Hmm, does the Chinese government have something like a NSL? Huawei may not be able to say what the Chinese gov have forced them to do?

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