Security News > 2020 > August > UK Defence Committee chair muses treating TikTok like Huawei: So eyeball its code then ban it from the country?

The chairman of UK Parliament's Defence Committee has suggested making popular app TikTok subject to Huawei-style code reviews by GCHQ, if its reported move to a new London HQ comes true.

Calls to simply ban TIKTOK are shortsighted - we are losing this tech Cold War.

Ellwood's suggestion of "GCHQ cyber scrutiny" echoes the security arrangements allowing Huawei to sell its carrier-grade mobile network equipment in the UK. Eavesdropping agency GCHQ, through its public-facing National Cyber Security Centre offshoot, oversees the security of Huawei's firmware through a joint venture called the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, also known as The Cell.

The firmware is inspected for evidence of espionage backdoors, or code vulnerabilities that could be used as backdoors, in order to soothe public concerns over Chinese state espionage being conducted through Huawei - a mission HCSEC will no longer conduct once Huawei is stripped out of UK mobile networks towards the end of this decade.

TikTok, which has reportedly been downloaded more than two billion times, is at the centre of controversy over its Chinese ownership for broadly similar reasons to American dislike of Huawei.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/08/03/tiktok_gchq_analysis/