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US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

arstechnica.com

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Re: US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

#61

Post by walterbell »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #56
ngngngng wrote: post #48

While we're on the subject, is Signal still the best way for me to communicate privately? I've got all the people I communicate with daily using it now, and I feel relatively confident that the communications are private. Are they?

Given their demand to your phone number, along with social graph (phone list and communication targets) I do not trust it to be secure and private. It's probably secure against phone company snooping. But I wouldn't trust it much past that.

Wire.com E2E encryption does not require phone number or social graph. They are also working to standardize the wire protocol via IETF MLS, with cryptographers from multiple companies.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/

Re: US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

#62

Post by ChrisSD »

jariel wrote: post #58
ChrisSD wrote: post #7

Reminder: US intelligence lies. They are not unique in this but it's worth repeating. They might be right about Huawei or they might not, either way saying "we totally have proof!" without providing proof is effectively meaningless.

" saying "we totally have proof!" without providing proof is effectively meaningless." They've provided ostensible 'proof' to the authorities in Germany and the UK who are the entities they are trying to convince of the issue, which is reasonable. We'll have to wait to see how the Europeans respond.

The British response has been to still go ahead with using Huawei for potentially over 30% of their non-core infrastructure.

In any case, my point is not that they aren't plausible reasons why they might not make any proof public. My point is that they aren't above using those plausible reasons to propagate disinformation. So their statements are meaningless to us (the public) because it's impossible to discern truth from lies without further information.

Re: US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

#63

Post by bordercases »

jariel wrote: post #58
ChrisSD wrote: post #7

Reminder: US intelligence lies. They are not unique in this but it's worth repeating. They might be right about Huawei or they might not, either way saying "we totally have proof!" without providing proof is effectively meaningless.

" saying "we totally have proof!" without providing proof is effectively meaningless." They've provided ostensible 'proof' to the authorities in Germany and the UK who are the entities they are trying to convince of the issue, which is reasonable. We'll have to wait to see how the Europeans respond.

UK has problem of ex-parliament being on board of UK division of Huawei. Doubt they'd shoot themselves in the foot and would probably do much in their power to prevent deals not going through.

Re: US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

#64

Post by michaelt »

mech1234 wrote: post #10

A question to Europeans reading this- If you had to assume that U.S. 5G equipment manufacturers would provide backdoors to U.S. officials, and Chinese 5G equipment manufacturers would provide backdoors to Chinese officials, and Europeans had to use one or the other, which would you choose?

A cynic would say America probably already has half a dozen back doors, so what's one more?

There's no point choosing a Chinese back door over an American one if people you talk to are going to entrust your private messages to gmail/ icloud/ aws/ backblaze/ whatsapp.

Re: US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

#65

Post by jariel »

donclark wrote: post #3
CameronNemo wrote: post #2

But can they prove it without revealing their own backdoors?

Or explaining why they allow those backdoors exist in the first place?

"Or explaining why they allow those backdoors exist in the first place?"

Nobody that matters needs to be convinced of the value 'back doors'. Only a minority of the American public and privacy types are very concerned.

Certainly the other government agencies i.e. UK/Germany would take it as a given in terms of 'why' such back doors are there.

There's a reference above to the WaPo article yesterday revealing the longest-running and best surveillance program by the US. It was run out of Germany. The Germans were wary of using it too broadly, but they were otherwise fully behind it, and their intel agencies balked at closing it down.

It's not really even very political: certainly, Democrats would be 'mostly' onboard - there isn't really much of a political base against it other than perhaps the Libertarian crowd.

I should add, some major US industrialists like Apple and Google probably do care a lot, and they do matter and do have influence. But probably not enough.

So while many of us may disagree, it's not at the end of the day as controversial as we may think it is.

Re: US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

#67

Post by crankylinuxuser »

walterbell wrote: post #61
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given their demand to your phone number, along with social graph (phone list and communication targets) I do not trust it to be secure and private. It's probably secure against phone company snooping. But I wouldn't trust it much past that.

Wire.com E2E encryption does not require phone number or social graph. They are also working to standardize the wire protocol via IETF MLS, with cryptographers from multiple companies. https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/

Indeed.

I haven't gotten around to using Wire. But when I've needed secure, private, and semianonymous messaging, I've used Tox.

Re: US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

#68

Post by crankylinuxuser »

ancorevard wrote: post #47
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US is essentially complaining that Huawei has access to the backdoor channels that only the US government was supposed to have. How is surprising? The defining characteristic of a nation state is that it has a monopoly on violence within its borders. Having a monopoly on intercepting telecom traffic is a logical consequence of that. For other countries though, yeah I'd prefer if neither China nor US have backdoo…

"I'd prefer if neither China nor US have backdoor access." So would I, but having lived in both countries, one of the two governments is decidedly more evil than the other.

Well, you could think about it this way: its better to possibly leak data to a foreign interest if they don't work well with your country. Sure, they may have some data, but they wont share it.

Re: US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

#69

Post by env123 »

tjpnz wrote: post #53
r6754dw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely the Chinese, simply because their foreign policy is much less violent than that of the US, and they don't try to forcefully export their political and economic system to other countries.

Belt and Road Initiative

Opium wars

Re: US says it can prove Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks

#70

Post by chmod775 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #28
ChrisSD wrote: post #7

Reminder: US intelligence lies. They are not unique in this but it's worth repeating. They might be right about Huawei or they might not, either way saying "we totally have proof!" without providing proof is effectively meaningless.

If they had proof they would have showed it already. Nothing would help their rhetoric more than cold hard facts. If they haven't done it, it means: a) there isn't any backdoor, or b) exposing their backdoors would expose their own backdoors. I'm betting on b.

Considering their history of outright lies I'm betting on a).
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