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China used Huawei to hack network, says report

theaustralian.com.au

121–127 of 127 posts

Re: China used Huawei to hack network, says report

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear... paranoia is an irrational fear that people are out to get you. If you are actually being spied on by someone (you are) then that word doesn't apply since the fear of that spying is 100% rational.

Yeah, what I was aiming for was anything on the scale from conscientious through to paranoid. If you're "hot" on the issue, rationally or otherwise it could pay off to some extent. You might say, if it pays off then it's not paranoia -- never cross a road and you can't be run over crossing the road, but I'd still consider it paranoid. So, yeah, ...

You're not the only one. It seems like paranoia has taken on this new-ish meaning over the past few years of just being afraid of something that is totally valid. It seems the previous usage of it has kinda died out somewhat.

Re: China used Huawei to hack network, says report

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is going to accuse a company of having third party spy chips in their phones, they'd better be ready to prove it. Especially if that company is known for their insanely strict (not very strict, actually insane ) supply chain management and have been known to put suppliers into bankruptcy for not meeting the company's supply needs exactly (GTAT sapphire). Especially a company very recently in the news for h…

Assume innocence over guilt, assume guilt over innocence; false positives or false negatives. Where burden of proof stands depends on the kind of error you're attempting to minimize. In this case I don't think it's warranted to try and minimize the rate of error of accidentally not trusting even if you have had some trust before. It's because security is a hard, induction-based problem. You counter it with vigilance…

Alright then, I can play that game too. Apple Watches collect and process your DNA and the US Army uses it to create waves of genetic clone soldiers.

It must be true, because some random person said it on the Internet. If you want to assume Apple is doing awful things based on laughably improbable rumors with absolutely no proof, you must believe this is true. Every soldier is actually a genetic clone of an Apple Watch wearer, and you must explicitly accept this as true because I said it's true. I don't have to prove it's right, and you can't prove it's wrong, which by your logic means it must be true with no exceptions.

Unless you truly believe you can't be impacted by DNA theft or your genes are so petty that they would never be useful to the US Army, or you own Apple stock or some other stake, you must believe that Apple is creating an army of clones that will replace you and integrate into society as sleeper agents until the revolution is upon us.

You see how ridiculous that sounds? That is your argument.

Re: China used Huawei to hack network, says report

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume innocence over guilt, assume guilt over innocence; false positives or false negatives. Where burden of proof stands depends on the kind of error you're attempting to minimize. In this case I don't think it's warranted to try and minimize the rate of error of accidentally not trusting even if you have had some trust before. It's because security is a hard, induction-based problem. You counter it with vigilance…

Alright then, I can play that game too. Apple Watches collect and process your DNA and the US Army uses it to create waves of genetic clone soldiers. It must be true, because some random person said it on the Internet. If you want to assume Apple is doing awful things based on laughably improbable rumors with absolutely no proof, you must believe this is true. Every soldier is actually a genetic clone of an Apple Wat…

My argument is weaker, it's just "trust but verify" plus our disagreement about the background probabilities of such rumors being correct based off of the contextual information we each believe is relevant. Chinese espionage and tech transfer is not a new thing but it's only recently been coming to a head in geopolitical discourse.

Try browsing this 2018 report: https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/Section%20301%20FINAL.P...

Most of the indicting evidence is mainly cyber-security related, which is not always the same as exploiting a hardware backdoor. But hardware backdoors are a solid vector for penetrating digital systems and this strategy has been exploited by state actors and corporate actors in domestic and foreign operations before. Like NSA plus Intel chips or their Google data-center taps as revealed through the PRISM leaks. Or Google with their microphones bypassing the recording lights.

So even if the evidence currently falls in Apple's favor, which is fine, there's still no good reason to believe that this will always be true and it's still good security hygiene to go through a cycle of paranoia to ensure that it stays true. China is just the most recent bad actor to add to the pile of institutions to defend against.

I agree that the rumor itself could be weak. But I would also be curious under what conditions you would be willing to take on the possibility of compromised hardware. Would it have to be Apple's CEO taking the issue public, risking their stock price? Would it have to be a verified Apple insider putting their reputation on the line for leaking trade secrets about their pipeline without confronting their superiors first?

Re: China used Huawei to hack network, says report

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume innocence over guilt, assume guilt over innocence; false positives or false negatives. Where burden of proof stands depends on the kind of error you're attempting to minimize. In this case I don't think it's warranted to try and minimize the rate of error of accidentally not trusting even if you have had some trust before. It's because security is a hard, induction-based problem. You counter it with vigilance…

Alright then, I can play that game too. Apple Watches collect and process your DNA and the US Army uses it to create waves of genetic clone soldiers. It must be true, because some random person said it on the Internet. If you want to assume Apple is doing awful things based on laughably improbable rumors with absolutely no proof, you must believe this is true. Every soldier is actually a genetic clone of an Apple Wat…

It should also go without speaking that distrust is not quite the same as believing something. It's closer to holding doubt, and even if doubt can be motivated by a guess it's not the same as endorsing a guess as fact. You're misrepresenting my point in at least that regard.

Re: China used Huawei to hack network, says report

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a significant number of people here the US is a foreign hostile government spying on all our comms.

but as a us citizen i could care less if the govt is spyin on non citizens. in fact, it might even be their job to, in order to keep us safe. the us isn’t responsible for treating everyone in the world as it’s citizens

[deleted]

Re: China used Huawei to hack network, says report

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a significant number of people here the US is a foreign hostile government spying on all our comms.

but as a us citizen i could care less if the govt is spyin on non citizens. in fact, it might even be their job to, in order to keep us safe. the us isn’t responsible for treating everyone in the world as it’s citizens

[deleted]

Re: China used Huawei to hack network, says report

#127
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One government is actually putting people into fucking camps[1], the other isn't. The scale in which the Chinese Government is bad dwarfs the bad things the US Government may do. No Government is perfect, but there are orders of magnitudes in difference between the badness of the US and that of the Chinese Government. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45812419

So one is cancer, the other one is a broken leg. Yeah, I prefer to have the broken leg. Doesn't mean it's a good thing to allow easily to break a leg. Americans have been watching too much TV stating how great their country is, they now repeat it again and again without thinking about it. I've never seen any other free country population doing that anywhere in the world, and I travel a lot. It's even weirder when I c…

I'm not American. I have no doubt that the American Government has its own daemons and is shit in many ways. However, it is at least notionally accountable to its populace, and has always claimed and aspired to be a beacon of freedom (I doubt its ever lived up t its claims). But the Chinese make no such claim, and do not act, nor try to act in such a virtuous manner.

As much as I detest America and their government, I'd rather a American hegemony than a Chinese one.

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