Comment by KaiserPro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KaiserPro | Hacker News Reader

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This is missing the point.

All Comms kit has back doors in it. Its about choosing whom you allow to put them in.

Cisco was riddled with backdoors, and if you were interesting, the five eyes would specially intercept your kit and put extra bits in before it was delivered to you.

The issue here is geopolitical. Who has control of your friend's internet.

Now there are few ways to look at this:

1) this is the present government's master plan to use this as a bargaining chip in negotiations

2) The kit is going to be at the edge, which if the network is designed properly, will mitigate attempts to snoop or spoof

3) GCHQ et al, can't plan for shit.

4) The government and civil service can't plan for shit, don't understand how tech can influence geo politics

5) Trump is trying to get allies to buy shitty expensive kit from the USA.

Out of all of these 4 is my favourite hypothesis, but there are bound to be more factors. Yes, Huawei have sponsored a lab to prove that their kit is secure. But of course they would, they are not going to ship gimped kit to be tested.

Also, As Huawei kit already operates vast parts of openreach's network (the company that runs the vast majority of landlines and fibre) the point is kind of moot. The decision to allow this is why marconi bit the bucket, killing the last bit on comms design the UK had. (like every other pioneering electronics/computing company in the UK.)

5) Trump is trying to get allies to buy shitty expensive kit from the USA.

This is the only point I'm not sure I agree with. The US lost a major chunk of our Telecoms hardware capability when Lucent imploded in 2006 and took Bell Labs and all its engineers with it. Alcatel bought it, then Nokia bought it. So there's not much telecoms gear the US can provide to the EU/UK, that EU companies can't. Not much reason for the EU/UK to go with US suppliers here.

Maybe UK would rather be spied upon by Chinese Gov. than by US Gov. I know I would.

Why would you want that?

The USA is our long time ally. Yes, I can roll things off the top of my head where they’ve stitched us up but I can also do the same for areas where mutual cooperation with the US has greatly helped us.

That’s everything from military cooperation during the Cold War to the original Human Genome project.

I can’t easily do that with China. I can point to the constant cyber attacks coming from China or their closed markets but I can’t think of many ways China cooperates with us.

Perhaps I’ve missed some examples and someone could enlighten me where China has acted in the UK’s interest?

Another subtle post I see...

Existing Huawei equipment should be removed. Sunken cost fallacy is well...a fallacy.

You mentioned Trump to ellicit political emotions but oppositiin to Huawei by US started during Obama's era and had bipartisan support.

GCHQ and the UK can indeed plan "for shit" as you put it, possibly more than you CCP fellas.

Whether they use this a bargaining chip or not does not change China's hostilities.

And last but far from least!!!!! It does not matter if their equipment is on the edge, do you want HN readers to suspend all knowledge of networking? Even if their equipment is purely layer2 and will only see encrypted traffic:

1) this still lets them be poisitoned to exploit and track arbitrary devices. 2) this still let's be in a position where they can abuse trust with the core or exploit the core. 3) this still lets them be in a position where they can cripple UK's communication infrastructure (DOS),which if they're smart,that's the primary vulnerability they will exploit in case of an invasion/war/pre-kinetic-war

> Existing Huawei equipment should be removed. Sunken cost fallacy is well...a fallacy.

I've not called for it to be removed, I pointed out that Openreach's decision (backed up by government) killed the only domestic player. Hence my comments on not being able to plan. Also, being in my current position I work closely with policy maker and those who advise. The level of dysfunction, piss poor office politics and general incompetence, is all too depressing

> Whether they use this a bargaining chip or not does not change China's hostilities.

This is orthogonal to what a bargaining chip is for. Its not about hostilities, its about who is in control. As now small player, shopping loyalties is the last great choice Britain has. (EU/US/other) Think Israel in the 50s/60s. They played a blinder.

> 1) this still lets them be poisitoned to exploit and track arbitrary devices.

yes and no. They still require access. If we ignore that the entire backhaul touches huawei kit, nominally the control plane is going to be separated from the data plane, whilst they could in theory collect this data, they'd still need to get it out.

> 2) this still let's be in a position where they can abuse trust with the core or exploit the core.

if the control plane is on the same network then yes. But as you well know control planes needs to be isolated to stop all sorts of failure types.

> 3) this still lets them be in a position where they can cripple UK's communication infrastructure (DOS),which if they're smart,that's the primary vulnerability they will exploit in case of an invasion/war/pre-kinetic-war

THe same goes for all the backdoors in present kit. Just because a country "owns" a manufacturer it doesn't mean that they own the backdoors.

But all of this supposes that every telecom use the same kit. Unlike landline, which is monopolised by openreach, there are still four mobile networks. of course its possible to launch a DOS on all of them using technical means, but its far simpler, cheaper and quicker to bribe a few NOC operators.

I personally don't think we should be using huawei kit, marconi shouldn't have been killed. but politics is politics.

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