[Politics] Trump v Huawei

[drew]

So an interesting twist to the debate about the security of involving Huawei in our telecoms infrastructure. My gut feeling is that the security expert advice was to keep them away from it but some politicians have an eye on sacrificing security for trade!! No fan of Trump but his meeting with May will be interesting. Wouldn't mind being fly on the wall in that one, probably alongside the chinese miniaturised robotic fly!!!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48289550

 

[vegster]

Trump now declares a National Emergency over IT threats !

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48289550

 

[LamieRobertson]

Trump now declares a National Emergency over IT threats !

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48289550

It’s all going to end in tit for tat measures

 

[vegster]

It’s all going to end in tit for tat measures

Or, WAR !

 

[beorhthelm]

Huawei is already in our telecoms infrastructure. this is about allowing telecoms companies to chose primary hardware provider for 5G over others, not so good but American.

 

[Marshy]

Just spent a million quid upgrading our entire core network to huawei.....

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Just spent a million quid upgrading our entire core network to huawei.....

And it would have cost you nearly twice that to use Cisco !

 

[Marshy]

And it would have cost you nearly twice that to use Cisco !

Hence the Huawei decision...if we have to rip it out and start again....grim

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Hence the Huawei decision...if we have to rip it out and start again....grim

Only an idiot would listen to Trump & co. Huawei is great kit and you get a lot of bang for your buck. Their support is fantastic - I worked for a reseller of both Cisco and Huawei and we found bugs in both of their code. Cisco - wait over three months for a fix, Huawei had us fixed code in three days and written from scratch. I've put loads of it in to some very well known companies and public bodies such as unis. It's all a fuss about nothing. And as the standard security advice goes - just don't use the same manufactuers devices in your core as your firewalls - problem fixed.

 

[Triggaaar]

Only an idiot would listen to Trump & co. Huawei is great kit and you get a lot of bang for your buck. Their support is fantastic - I worked for a reseller of both Cisco and Huawei and we found bugs in both of their code. Cisco - wait over three months for a fix, Huawei had us fixed code in three days and written from scratch.

That's beside the point. It matters not that they are capable of providing a good service. What matters is whether the Chinese government choose to make them spy on everything.

I've put loads of it in to some very well known companies and public bodies such as unis.

It's all a fuss about nothing. And as the standard security advice goes - just don't use the same manufactuers devices in your core as your firewalls - problem fixed.

If Huawei were to deliberately send data elsewhere, through in-built back doors, how would a separate firewall help?

 

[vegster]

Just spent a million quid upgrading our entire core network to huawei.....

Think of the money that has been " Saved " initially in order for someone to make some money at the public's expense ! Someone's done quite well out of this and someone else will do quite well again when its all replaced by American or French tech. Capitalism in action !

Several ex- government officials are conveniently, on the Board of Huawie, as a matter of interest.

 

[The Clamp]

Just one of the many hideous compromises we will have to make post no deal brexit.
The Tory party sold this country down the river. And got idiots to vote for it.

 

[Springal]

I work for a network vendor / manufacturer so Huawei are a competitor. However this all makes me laugh, there is very little evidence of any wrong doing and it is all about protectionism of mainly US tech firms that has been a fairly closed shop.

Security concerns are BS, Huawei has been in use all over the place for 10+ years and no-one seemed bothered until now.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

That's beside the point. It matters not that they are capable of providing a good service. What matters is whether the Chinese government choose to make them spy on everything.

I'd get the MOD being nervous to use it and even some other government departments but I'm not convinced the Chinese are going to learn very much from say the Natural History Museum ( well apart from something about dinosaurs ! ).

You know that Huawei kit runs the cores of BT, EE and Talk Talk right ? Most the 4G platform has Huawei in it. So why the fuss now when we've been running it for over a decade ?

If Huawei were to deliberately send data elsewhere, through in-built back doors, how would a separate firewall help?

Because if you put a set of non-Huawei firewalls at your outer edge of your network, or even surround your core with them, you can control what traffic is passed and what devices can speak to the outside world. I will admit many companies don't lock down their firewalls properly. Ideally you'd have a double layer with sets of two types of firewalls behind each other - many of the public bodies I've done work for do this.

 

[vegster]

I work for a network vendor / manufacturer so Huawei are a competitor. However this all makes me laugh, there is very little evidence of any wrong doing and it is all about protectionism of mainly US tech firms that has been a fairly closed shop.

Security concerns are BS, Huawei has been in use all over the place for 10+ years and no-one seemed bothered until now.

10 years ago the Chinese government were not actively targeting Uyghur Muslims and putting them in camps, or building islands in the south China Sea to claim territorial rights or engaging in theft of technology.

 

[Triggaaar]

I'd get the MOD being nervous to use it and even some other government departments but I'm not convinced the Chinese are going to learn very much from say the Natural History Museum ( well apart from something about dinosaurs ! ).

I agree, there are some companies that just aren't going to be of interest to China, and therefore not a problem. But if our overall network is managed by Huawei, wouldn't that potentially allow them to spy on more industry as a whole?

You know that Huawei kit runs the cores of BT, EE and Talk Talk right ? Most the 4G platform has Huawei in it. So why the fuss now when we've been running it for over a decade ?

I don't know why the fuss is only now. It would depend what each piece of hardware is capable of doing.

Because if you put a set of non-Huawei firewalls at your outer edge of your network, or even surround your core with them, you can control what traffic is passed and what devices can speak to the outside world. I will admit many companies don't lock down their firewalls properly. Ideally you'd have a double layer with sets of two types of firewalls behind each other - many of the public bodies I've done work for do this.

If this can be proven to be fail-safe, then I'd expect Huawei to prove it to sceptical governments.

 

[beorhthelm]

I agree, there are some companies that just aren't going to be of interest to China, and therefore not a problem. But if our overall network is managed by Huawei, wouldn't that potentially allow them to spy on more industry as a whole?.

not really, anything of note or even mundane, is encrypted nowadays. they'll only see that data packet went from a to b not what the data was. and the networks wont be "managed" by Huawei, companies install and manage the networks, if they are doing a half decent job restricting unauthorised traffic externally and internally.

this is all about US firms not being competitive on price or features. it will put back the deployment of 5G by years, though irony here is that no-one would really care if that happened anyway. dont really need it, more 4G coverage and capacity across urban and rural areas far preferable to trying to roll out 5G to limited urban areas.

 

[Triggaaar]

not really, anything of note or even mundane, is encrypted nowadays. they'll only see that data packet went from a to b not what the data was. and the networks wont be "managed" by Huawei, companies install and manage the networks, if they are doing a half decent job restricting unauthorised traffic externally and internally.

this is all about US firms not being competitive on price or features.

If that's really true, why on earth are the experts of Western countries against it? The US, sure, they have a vested interest, but the rest of the west would ignore them if you're right.

 

[beorhthelm]

If that's really true, why on earth are the experts of Western countries against it? The US, sure, they have a vested interest, but the rest of the west would ignore them if you're right.

Germany has. we apparently have to limited degree. France will probably use it to promote own homegrown networking kit. and so on, its not widely accepted (even in US).

 

[albionfan37]

I understand that the Chinese government have given ultimatums and told us all it’s my way or the hua wei!