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Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

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Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#21
So this research is based on a subset of 590 million or more CVs that were leaked by Chinese recruitment platforms. The author uses keywords like "华为", "Huawei", "People's Liberation Army" and "PLA" to identify people who worked for multiple institutions.

That seems like a great dataset for some statistical analysis, but unfortunately we aren't even told how large the subsets are. (The figure of 590 million is from a news report about the leak.) So it's hard to tell how large the problem is, and how it compares to other companies or countries.

The results are presented as three profiles based on three CVs from the leak, but edited to obscure their identity. It's only mentioned in the conclusion that the profiles are actually composites, which I take to mean that they combine information from multiple CVs each. That's unfortunate, because many of the claims rely on one and the same person being involved in multiple activities. We'll have to trust the author that those modifications do not embellish anything.

The three profiles are:

1. A software engineer in Huawei QA since 2011 who from 2012 on also held a research and teaching position with the PLA's National University of Defense Technology, working on signals, remote management and scripting. The paper claims that this places them within a branch of the Strategic Support Forces (who are responsible e.g. for cyber warfare). It's not clear to me whether that's something specific to that person, or whether any similar research at NUDT is classed that way. NUDT also does civilian research, e.g. Microsoft was criticized for publishing a paper on beauty estimation co-authored with NUDT researchers: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=107...

2. A Huawei engineer who was responsible for building lawful interception capabilities, working on roll-outs in multiple countries. He served as a representative for the Chinese Ministry of State Security on one project "likely guaranteeing project specifications". The author tries to imply that this was to grant the MSS access to other countries' networks, but alternatively Huawei simply has product managers responsible for communication with the law enforcement agencies doing the intercepting in their own country's networks. The author also tries to link that person to a "backdoor" in infrastructure of Vodafone Italy. However, Vodafone has denied the allegiations in the Bloomberg article he cites: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430

3. A network engineer who developed civilian and high-security military communication systems at CASTC, then worked at China Unicom for a year and then went to Huawei to lead network expansion projects. At CASTC, he gained expertise using Cisco and Nortel switches. The author construes this to imply that he assisted in espionage attempts involving fake Cisco routers.

Of the three, I'm going to classify 1. as harmless research (otherwise Microsoft is just as implicated as Huawei) and 3. as "person with security clearance changes jobs". 2. however at least supports this part of the paper's conclusion: "the institutional relationship between Huawei and Chinese state security services directly contradicts Huawei claims that they have no relationship with these services." Huawei should probably clarify those statements to mean that the relationship doesn't grant Chinese security services access to other countries' data.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#22
post #10

So if a Chinese telecom wants to do business globally, it has to exclude all CCP members and avoid state intelligence personals all together?

Well, from the customer perspective, it shouldn't hire them in the first place.

They don't have to do that. But then they may end up being less successful, or entirely banned from doing business in certain places.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#23
post #12

Tons of former NSA persons work in the US private sector,especially within infosec.

Izrael's startup ecosystem heavily relies on ex-military intelligence officers, they have an entire pipeline for hiring them into startups.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2016/05/11/inside-...

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#24
post #12

Tons of former NSA persons work in the US private sector,especially within infosec.

Izrael's startup ecosystem heavily relies on ex-military intelligence officers, they have an entire pipeline for hiring them into startups. https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2016/05/11/inside-...

Everyone in Israel has to do military service so you would be hard pushed to create a company selling pea shooters that did not have ex-military in it. As for 'military intelligence' that is a large part of what the military actually is, so you would expect them to graduate into tech roles rather than making pea shooters or anything else 'harmless'.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#25
post #18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keyword here is “former”. In the Huawei scenario, a lot of them seem to be active intelligence officials, not former ones.

How do we know that "former" is not just on paperwork? When I hear the arguments against China and their tech companies, I don't have a problem believing them, however I do not expect anything less from the USA. Remember Snowden? I'm simply assuming that Facebook, Google, Apple, Cisco or any other US tech company are tapped by the US 3 letter agencies. There were some reveleations on that(PRISMA) but it's probably ju…

I think the big difference is that US companies can meaningfully resist the US government if they choose to, and they often do. Chinese companies cannot.

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#28
post #11

However with the same logic you can pretty much prove none if the big companies in the world is independent.

It gets especially funny for any company hiring Israeli security experts. Or even the US for that matter, college is expensive and there seems to be an array of people who get their degree financed that way.

but in the US they usually aren't simultaneously employed

Re: Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies

#29
post #18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keyword here is “former”. In the Huawei scenario, a lot of them seem to be active intelligence officials, not former ones.

How do we know that "former" is not just on paperwork? When I hear the arguments against China and their tech companies, I don't have a problem believing them, however I do not expect anything less from the USA. Remember Snowden? I'm simply assuming that Facebook, Google, Apple, Cisco or any other US tech company are tapped by the US 3 letter agencies. There were some reveleations on that(PRISMA) but it's probably ju…

So what? Well, we get to choose which side we allow to spy on us.

I mean, I suppose we could make an argument for all people being equal in all equal ways, but don't forget that the each state actor is driven by different sets of morality, politics and even philosophy, or perhaps lack of it.

The only conclusion we can derive is that this whole surveillance/spying thing will never stop, everyone does it and will continue to do it. It would be wise to assume that everything is bugged, everything has backdoors, and every hardware vendor has been compromised.

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