back to article UK cautiously gives Huawei the nod for 5G network gear sales

Britain will allow Huawei infrastructure kit on 5G mobile networks, according to reports, but not into the core of those networks, which is where UK spies fear Chinese backdoors exists. The Daily Telegraph reported this morning that the National Security Council, chaired by Prime Minister Theresa May, agreed to give the …

  1. K

    Wonders never cease..

    When you think the government has the decision making skills of somebody high on meths, they actually produce something that seems quite coherent and thought out, whilst at the same time giving a middle finger to POTUS The Tango Man!

    To be fair this, this was put together by civil servants...

    1. JetSetJim

      Re: Wonders never cease..

      Meh - it's still probably got loopholes glaore. 5G is gloriously distributed computing, so Huawei can probably classify something as RAN that can hoover up all sorts of data - MEC platforms in particular would seem like something they would focus on, as they can do RAN functions and don't need to sit in the traditional core.

      1. Nick Kew

        Re: Wonders never cease..

        Hopefully this just takes out political meddling, and leaves the decisions to the telcos who are actually deploying the networks - and whose expertise stands in contrast to POTUS.

        The reactions of some of our government ministers tells us which of them regard Blighty as a satrapy of the US. Dammit, when I were a lad, it was socialists whose mad ideology wanted the state to interfere in productive industries; now it's so-called right-wing Tories and an off-scale Republican president.

  2. Flywheel
    WTF?

    No one buys telecoms services based on how secure they are

    Hmmm.. I'd say the first paragraph negates that statement. And bearing mind that I'm a self-acknowledged tin-foil wearer along with the fact that we're still on course to move our emergency services onto mobile networks (correct me if I'm wrong) I'd say that a secure network is of paramount importance!

    1. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: No one buys telecoms services based on how secure they are

      And using a provider that has full coverage for the emergency services which EE don't. Especially at Royal Sussex in Brigton. The EE signal is very, very, very poor to non-existent.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. cmaurand

        Re: No one buys telecoms services based on how secure they are

        all it takes is one out of band management box to be connnected to the internet in your scenario. Otherwise, a backdoor in the switch or the switch simply sending usage data home to china would be a problem.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No one buys telecoms services based on how secure they are

        Yep, the odds that there will be a path to the internal network are guaranteed to be basically 100% for any network as complex as a cellular carrier's. Think of how many third party vendors have access to it for supporting their equipment, and you multiply the attack surface by those vendors, and then THEIR third party vendors.

        Is anyone willing to bet that there isn't a p0wned PC in any of those networks? It only takes ONE and there's your path to the configuration interface.

  3. Blockchain commentard

    Looks like we're now going to be calling the joint intelligence agencies 4 eyes, or speccy for short. Which would be funny since 007's nemesis was Spectre. Co-insy-dinks?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Sure, then the UK would close down RAF Menwith Hill (etc) and boot out the US from their soil.

      1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        .. and the more we can untangle ourselves from that mob the better.

        Although I do feel sorry for the American and Australian people.

  4. crayon

    but not into the core of those networks, which is where UK spies ...

    ... do their spying.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Mayhem strikes again

    The Chinese will have control of Britain's Energy security at Sizewall C and now a good chunk of our national networks, thanks to May's atrocious decisions. She really must hate Britain.

    1. Peter2 Silver badge

      Re: Mayhem strikes again

      The Chinese will have control of Britain's Energy security at Sizewall C and now a good chunk of our national networks, thanks to May's atrocious decisions. She really must hate Britain.

      Ok. The Chinese pony up the cash for building a new nuclear reactor to their own design in the UK, mostly because they want their design vetted and signed off in the country that produced the first commercial nuclear power station and that has the strictest nuclear regulation on the face of the planet. If the design gets signed off here then they can get them signed off anywhere, giving them a large potential market with good long term returns on the investment. If they manage the build process without getting ticked off by the regulators for screwing up then it's a major plus point for them building the same plants in other countries to replace coal plants. This is probably attractive if you are in the business building things, and have a planning cycle that is longer than that months reports.

      Although they Chinese own it, all of the staff operating it will be British and probably wouldn't obey orders to turn the plant off in times of tensions with China to make a political point. Not that China would be likely to do that anyway, as it would be the kiss of death to any chance of building or operating any infrastructure anywhere else. And consider just for the sake of argument what would happen if they did. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot by preventing themselves from recouping the build costs, and the effect on the UK grid would be trivial.

      We'd just get the coal tree burning "biomass" plants that are largely held in reserve fired up, or burn a bit more gas. This sort of thing happens frequently at the moment anyway due to the UK's ~21GW of installed wind turbines producing a very variable 1GW-7GW worth of power.

      Letting Huawei run 5g devices on the edge of the network is not particularly risky, as they couldn't decide to do really dodgy stuff like send copies of your phone conversations back to China without sending it through the core network, which they are locked out of.

      1. Semtex451

        Re: Mayhem strikes again

        So what do think happens when the war breaks out?

        1. Dave the Cat

          Re: Mayhem strikes again

          What war? The war over the SCS? It's not in China's interest to start a war with anyone in the west. Their economy would be crippled within weeks.

          As outlined above. It'll be managed by British workers. I'd find it very hard to believe they would shut the plant down.

        2. This post has been deleted by its author

          1. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: Mayhem strikes again

            >Gavin Williamson is bonkers.

            He might be, but the decision to lease the UK's new carrier to the US navy to operate in the South China Sea was taken before he entered office; he simply reannounced it (as is the way with modern politicians - so expect it to be announced as something new by whoever is in office when the time comes for the carrier to actually go to the South China Seas) and put what he thought was a clever spin on it.

            1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. Nick Kew
            Trollface

            Re: Mayhem strikes again

            Congratulations on posting that little rant without even mentioning our beloved transport minister.

          3. Peter2 Silver badge

            Re: Mayhem strikes again

            Gavin Williamson keeps being seen as a threat to Mrs May & Hammond. You can tell when she's particularly scared because stories with highly debatable accuracy get leaked to the newspapers. Hammond has had it in for him since he told the RAF to not accept any more bookings for the Queens Flight from politicians unless they paid for them.

            It's the same as when she's scared of Boris, stories like "we've sold the water cannons Boris bought during the London Riots that were legal for use in the UK until the (at the time) home secretary Mrs May decided to ban them after they were bought, making them unusable in the UK" appear in the papers.

            Personally, I think that guessing who is doing the smearing of the opposition in the newspaper gives a better indication of how things are going in politics than the purportedly news items that are printed.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    he who captures the signal captures all

    Not inside the core network... just the ones collecting the signal in the first place..

  7. Alister

    With a bit of luck, POTUS will be so pissed off that he'll cancel his state visit.

    We live in hope.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds reasonable...

    Are you sure the govt was involved? Where’s the BS? Do pigs fly?

    I’m so confused...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No hypocrisy from our politicians? Not!!

    Thirty years ago, western countries decided to reduce manufacturing costs by outsourcing to China. This meant that local design and manufacturing DISAPPEARED. Chinese companies learned a lot from the outsourcing.

    *

    And now we have loud whining from UK politicians - BLAMING THE CHINESE because there are no local sources for high technology products like 5G.

    *

    And then there’s more hypocrisy from Jeremy Fleming (GCHQ). His organisation is JUST SALIVATING for the widespread implementation of 5G....because GCHQ (aka STASI) will have greatly increased opportunities for spying on the 60 million UK citizens. His only regret is that he needs Chinese support to get this done (see above).

    *

    But of course none of this hypocrisy, none of this complete lack of public policy for manufacturing over the years, no spotlight on yet another area of self-inflicted self-harm will appear in the public prints.

    1. DerekCurrie
      Holmes

      Re: No hypocrisy from our politicians? Not!!

      “This meant that local design and manufacturing DISAPPEARED.”

      I must correct you: China doesn’t do design. China rips off design and every other form of intellectual property (IP). This is due to the destruction of the creative incentive forced by the nature of ‘communism’. This destruction is historically consistent. If everything belongs to everyone, or more specifically everything belongs to ‘the state’, then creative incentive is gone and criminal incentive takes its place. Thus my term China: Criminal Nation. You’ll note the same inevitable criminal incentive in all ‘communist’ states through history.

      If there are those who dare to be creative inside China, despite their totalitarian regime, I highly recommend supporting them, as long as they are not yet-another abusive tool of the Chinese government.

      [Work for Quality Capitalism. Regulate Crap Capitalism out of existence. That’s my point of view.]

  10. Rich 2 Silver badge

    Core

    So we want to keep the Chinese out of the core of our mobile networks

    But we're not that fussed when it comes to building a new nuclear power station?

    1. sanmigueelbeer
      Mushroom

      Re: Core

      But we're not that fussed when it comes to building a new nuclear power station?

      What is the worst they (the Chinese) can do? Cause a reactor meltdown (due to faulty design or code exploit)?

      Oh, wait ...

  11. Derek Kingscote

    They Don't Know What They Are Doing!

    Although they Chinese own it, all of the staff operating it will be British and probably wouldn't obey orders to turn the plant off in times of tensions with China to make a political point.

    That assumes that there no remote control to turn it on or off.

    Nest and Hive work autonomously and have remote control.

    Building remote control in at the design stage would be a trivial task, so don't think Huawei wouldn't do it.

    Also think: if these things have GPS and individual serial numbers and a small amount of intelligence then they will know when their kit is close to the American embassy/GCHQ/name your vulnerable site and message back to China. Is the traffic at the edge encrypted or in clear? This kit will be handling massive amounts of data, so we can't tell what is "standard" data traffic and what is control data. The control data or tapped traffic won't be visible because of dilution. And it doesn't _have_ to go back to China, it could just as easily go to a location under Chinese control with high security, so it may be in a business shed near you.

    Who is doing the thinking about this?

    This is a one way ticket and once you've lost control, you'll never get it back.

    They say Huawei are about two years ahead of everybody else. I say we could easily wait two years!

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: They Don't Know What They Are Doing!

      >They say Huawei are about two years ahead of everybody else. I say we could easily wait two years!

      Trouble is without Huawei actually selling stuff in the West, there won't be much incentive for (US-based) companies to actually make the investment... In fact I expect they will be spending the time implementing all the features requested by NSA/GCHQ; and still be two plus years behind their Chinese counterparts...

    2. sanmigueelbeer

      Re: They Don't Know What They Are Doing!

      Whao! Hold it right there.

      The Triton APT easily hacked a Saudi Arabian petrochem plant. AGAIN.

      I'm not saying that the Triton group is a "top notch" hacking group, but if they can hack an industrial system/SCADA in a matter of hours, how long will it take "threat actors" access to the industrial controllers of a fully hot Chinese-designed nuclear reactor via a Chinese-made, Chinese-designed 5G backbone network?

      For example, let's say that the UK government has "detained" the daughter of a very prominent businessman and the same businessman has a lot of "friends" in high places. All it takes is a press of the return key and ... things can go dark. Really, really fast.

      I'm just saying ...

  12. sanmigueelbeer
    Joke

    Romance of the Three Kingdoms (part 2)

    Middle Kingdom (China) + Hermit Kingdom (North Korea) + United Kingdom

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm not too fussed either way... of course it's nice if we avoid rogue operators to have easy access to carry out evil... however, if someone really wants to, they will find a way, regardless of who's equipment is in place

  14. DerekCurrie
    Facepalm

    Government Level Feeding-The-Beast

    China: Criminal Nation thanks sucker UK for the cash and toe-hold on potential 5G network surveillance.

    Feed The Beast And It Will Eventually Feed On You.

  15. StephenTompsett

    Who can you trust?

    Huawei - nothing proven (yet)... but lots of rumors..

    Americans - NSA have form in weakening security both hardware and algorithms

    The Swedes - Oops your license has expired?

    The Finns - Has provided intercept capabilities to governments...

    The British? - Sold off or given away the technology years ago?

    The Koreans - ???

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