GCHQ's cyber arm report on Huawei said to be burning hole through UK.gov desks
- Reference: 1594202470
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/07/08/huawei_ncsc_report_trade_war_uk_ban_roundup/
- Source link:
The volume of industry chatter was turned up to 11 this week after newspaper reports that a controversial former MI6 spy had written an 86-page dossier titled "China's Elite Capture" which claimed China uses Huawei as a "strategic asset" to lean on leading "establishment" figures and convince them to take a more pro-China line in domestic politics.
The Daily Mail reported at length the claims of former MI6 spy [1]Christopher Steele that China had used current tensions over Huawei equipment in phone networks as a means of recruiting "useful idiots". The firm denied this, describing Steele’s dossier as having "no basis in fact".
Not normally known as a newspaper that shies away from scandal and intrigue, the Mail caveated its reporting of Steele's "China's Elite Capture" claims with the sentence: "The dossier, seen by the Daily Mail, is not being formally published, and does not contain corroborating evidence of some of its claims."
Steele previously wrote a lurid dossier claiming US president Donald Trump was the subject of extensive files of compromising material gathered by Vladimir Putin's Russia, a sensational claim when made in 2016. It continues to be the source of [2]political gossip today.
Ban by Britain still on cards
Separately, speculation has swirled over the past weeks that [3]Britain is set to ban its telcos from buying any Huawei-made network equipment , something very unlikely to have practical effect until the middle of this decade at the earliest thanks to Huawei's heavy presence in LTE/4G networks and nascent 5G networks alike.
China's London ambassador, Liu Xiaoming, hit back at Britain on Monday over reports of an impending ban by telling an international media [4]briefing : "When you get rid of Huawei, it sends out a very wrong message. You punish your image as a country that can conduct independent policy. It means you succumb to foreign pressure and you cannot make your own independent foreign policy. I always say Britain can only be great when it can have its independent foreign policy."
Ambassador Liu also lashed out at Britain’s decision to offer citizenship to 3 million Hong Kongers entitled to British nationality, something which would allow them to safely flee the newly assimilated autonomous territory. China tore up its diplomatic obligations to the UK, made in 1997 when the former colony was handed back to China after a century of British rule. The Asian superpower [5]recently imposed a draconian security law on Hong Kong.
That new law criminalises dissent in the formerly democratic colony, whose inhabitants are continuing protests.
NCSC report received by UK.gov
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has received an NCSC-backed report into Huawei, having told BBC radio [6]yesterday : "We're now examining it and understanding the implications of it."
This appears to be a reference to be the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre's annual report into the Chinese company's equipment and software-writing practices, something “the Cell” [7]didn’t hold back on last year .
NCSC is said to have examined the impact of the most recent US sanctions against Huawei, including the fact that they ban the firm from using American-designed electronic design automation software for laying out its silicon chips. It is said, by the Beeb, that Huawei turning to non-Western chip design and fabrication sources could cause NCSC to declare it too difficult to fully vet both the physical hardware and the processes used to write software and firmware running on it.
Amid not-entirely-groundless concerns that Huawei [8]is an integrated foreign policy tool of the Chinese state , a “no” from NCSC could provide Prime Minister Boris Johnson with the perfect excuse to ban Huawei’s carrier-grade equipment from British phone networks.
Comment
The argument is as much about politics as it is Huawei's technical capabilities. UK telco sources who spoke frankly to El Reg off the record have generally praised the Chinese company’s wares and general approach while shrugging their shoulders at the political war over its presence in Britain.
Whatever decision Britain makes about Huawei in the next few weeks will have a lasting impact on UK international relations both westwards and eastwards, as well as on Britain’s economic competitiveness in terms of widespread public access to low-latency 5G – though [9]even that political soundbite bears closer scrutiny .
Some on the less globalist side of the debate might argue that all of this hinging on one Chinese-owned company’s products rather proves their point. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/31/fbi_nunes_memo/
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/09/ivanka-trump-met-christopher-steele-years-before-russia-dossier.html
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/06/huawei_may_get_the_boot/
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/06/chinese-ambassador-uk-ban-on-huawei-would-damage-trust-hong-kong
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/01/china_passes_national_security_law_hong_kong/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/06/huawei_may_get_the_boot/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversight_board_savaging_annual_report/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/11/china_threatened_denmark_huawei_5g_free_trade_deal/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/05/gov_should_ignore_5g_hype_and_spend_700m_on_4g_telecoms_expert/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: WTF ....... Is the service demented and infiltrated?
Christopher Steele seems to write whatever he is paid to write, the question is, who is paying him now?
> UK telco sources who spoke frankly to El Reg off the record have generally praised the Chinese company’s wares and general approach while shrugging their shoulders at the political war over its presence in Britain.
Indeed, they've come a long way and are a good example of what happens when you put 60,000 bright young things together to buld a networking business. There are probably ways and means to put backdoors in the kit, but GCHQ and others don't seem to have found any significant ones they're willing to publish (or at least ones that aren't "oh, that's a debug port that accidentally got left in. Soz").
Compare that to other companies under a lot less organised scrutiny who regularly emit security vulnerabilities in their s/w. Security vulns are regularly found in Cisco kit, Nokia kit, and many others, but politicians don't seem to care about those ones.
"Security vulns are regularly found in Cisco kit, Nokia kit, and many others, but politicians don't seem to care about those ones."
Correction - they care deeply. After all they (or rather their puppet masters) put them in.
If only
If only we had some sort of committee that could be convened to handle matters like this.. an Intelligence and Security Committee if you will.
Re: If only
If only we had some sort of committee that could be convened to handle matters like this.. an Intelligence and Security Committee if you will.
Well yes, quite. However, any advice or "decision" from that committee would still be based on input from others; it has not, and could not have, and independent intelligence - gathering capabilities of its own.
On top of that, the I & S C is made up of politicians, and by all accounts many of those suspected of being "captured" by Middle Kingdom interests are current or one - time, er, politicians.
As a simple member of the public I expect a British government to make sure that it puts British interests ahead of those of any other country, and at the moment I worry that that may be far from the case.
Can't identify the smell
Either this is like [1]Peter Wright's , "Current government is working for communists," or else, " [2]WMD strike in 45 minutes. " Possibly a mixture of the two. It does read like he's worked backwards from the result required for political purposes.
However, from [3]Snowden's leaked papers we know that the 'merkin spooks have inserted back doors into exported Cisco kit. So they're no better. Nokia, who knows?
Shame we don't have our own hardware capability really. Past gov. policy was to favour the finance industry gamblers over manufacturing though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wright_(MI5_officer)#Claims_about_Roger_Hollis,_the_Wilson_Plot_et_al.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwald-nsa-tampers-us-internet-routers-snowden
Re: Can't identify the smell
However, from Snowden's leaked papers we know that the 'merkin spooks have inserted back doors into exported Cisco kit. So they're no better. Nokia, who knows?
A perfectly fair point, but IMHO the present situation regarding Huawei is only a small part of the much greater problem of actual or potential Chinese influence being to the detriment of wider British interests. Any involvement of foreign interests in the UK is there because the foreign interests see it as being to their benefit rather than ours, much the same as if I buy shares in company X it is on the basis that I hope that in the long term it will benefit me .
Shame we don't have our own hardware capability really. Past gov. policy was to favour the finance industry gamblers over manufacturing though.
Just stop thinking about the companies that the UK used to have; it's simply too depressing for words. If the names still exist it is only for the purpose of Badge Engineering. I think the way British electronic manufacturing has disappeared down the drain should be seen as a mark of shame.
No doubt
The Fail headline was something like:
Spy shocker in very TINY bikini...
"the Mail caveated its reporting"
in the hope Huawei dont do the world a favour and sue them into oblivion.
Can't have the Chinese take over from US spying, old chap
The irony is, of course, that replacing Huawei's components that were thoroughly vetted by everyone & their dog with US gear that doesn't want evaluation because of "national security" and "trade secrets" is pretty much guaranteeing traffic intercept, whereas the former did at least offer openness.
To be frank, at this moment I would not trust either so I would opt for something that had been taken apart and found clean by multiple independent parties, and which also happens to be a lot more advanced (which is, of course, where the real problem lies).
It appears Downing Street has yet again been played by the Americans. It's like an infection you just cannot shake.
Chinese ambassador: "Britain can only be great when it can have its independent foreign policy."
Couldn't agree more, old chap ... now would you like to hear some more about our independent foreign policy position on Hong Kong [1]... :-)
[1] Other suitably independent foreign policy positions are available.
WTF ....... Is the service demented and infiltrated?
Can you imagine the damage done to British intelligence services and the information leaked to all and sundry whenever any controversial former MI6 spy such as a Christopher Steele is wheeled out of confinement/quarantine/therapy/shady shadows to share his formerly anonymised ramblings?
And yes, as someone may not unreasonably suggest, here we might know all about such shenanigans, or certainly a great deal more than most about them and their efficacy, or not as the case may be for some. :-)