Huawei CTO insists: 'We are not a threat to UK and US national security'

One benefit

If it does have back doors at least they might support if for more than six months (joke).

The biggest disincentive for me buying "Varue" (sorry) far east versions of network kit is knowing if it will still be getting patches or support in a couple of,,,,, a years time. Being half the cost of Brand X should not mean I have to replace it twice as often, or finding it is no longer supported due to some insurmountable hardware scrimping.

I know its unfair to paint a whole countries output with the experiences of a few rogue manufacturers but having been bitten a few times it will take a while for me to trust kit sold with price as one of its main advantages.

I wonder...

has anyone considered that the reason the US and UK govs dislike Huawei gear is that its tech so simple they cant use their high tech spy gear to steal the packets straight from the switch?

"no no no dont use that nasty Huawei switch... use this nice shiney Cisco one, its much safer...... honest"

because lets face it, ALL our tech is made in China.

you dont see them banning the use of iphones do you?

and since you cant do big business in China without at least a pretend nod to the commie party i will bet that the Foxconn plants have ties exactly like Huawei

or how about Netgear, D-Link,Cisco etc? theres more to this than meets the eye

Plausible Deniability

You should take a look at the research by German security analysts, Phenoelit: Felix Lindner and his fellow-researcher Greg. Theyve presented at DEF-CON and other security related conferences, and have their slides and research up on their phenoelit web site.

Their take? "Huawei routers don't need backdoors, when every default service is enabled and exploitable. Its plausible deniability."

The DEF-CON talk can be found on YouTube and DEF-CON's own torrents; "Hacking [Redacted] Routers".

@Vociferous

"Yeah, the Chinese are still the worst when it comes to stealing tech."

Do you mean they are "worst at it" or "worst for it"?

"People focus on NSA and GCHQ because that's what they hear of, but their spying is mainly targeted at military/terror threats,"

Problem is they are treating EVERYTHING as a potential military/terror threat and hence are scooping everything they can get their hands on. Killing everybody in London is bound to remove 1 or 2 people who maybe be a potential threat, but that is hardly the most efficient or the most acceptable way of doing things.

"while the Chinese spying is aimed at stealing tech"

I'll eat my Huawei router (If I had one) if it can be proven that the NSA and GCHQ are not engaged in stealing tech - that may not be their primary mission but they're doing it nonetheless.

"... and suppressing human rights."

Whilst the Chinese in general have been enjoying more freedoms and human rights over the last 3-4 decades, the opposite is true of the US and the UK.

"ALL Chinese companies are nominally the property of the Chinese state, and the Chinese state has unrestricted rights to all company assets."

I don't know how you worked this out. Granted a lot of the major companies are state owned, if this is what you mean then fine, but then don't use the word "ALL". If that is not what you mean then I'm sure by whatever chain of logic you used to come to that conclusion can also be used to reach the same conclusion for any other company in any other country.

"The Chinese secret service runs the Chinese counterparts of Facebook and Google,"

Well do you have a youtube (or even a youku) link to back up your claims?

"and if the secret service wants to insert code in the firmware of a Huawei product then Huawei will comply."

At this moment in time there is no credible proof to support this. If there was credible proof do you not think that the US govt would have exposed this already? Or are they keeping quiet so as to not let anybody know that they are reading all the communiques shuttling back and forth between the CCP and Chinese companies?