Security News

The United States pressed France on Wednesday to take "Strong security measures" against potential breaches from 5G services provided by Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, saying failure to do so could imperil intelligence exchanges. The United States did not ask France for a Huawei ban, he said, but for strong protections against potential "Malicious intrusions" from software and firmware updates of any systems provided by the company.

They're calling on Johnson to allow them to use Huawei gear for antennas and non-core parts of their 5G mobile phone networks, the Guardian reports, noting that they could send the letter as early as this week. A secret technical assessment prepared last year by Britain's National Cyber Security Center, which is part of GCHQ and runs a center that tests Huawei equipment, reportedly concluded that the risks of using Huawei as part of the national 5G rollout, especially for non-core parts of the network, can be minimized if the process is appropriately managed.

The latest edition of the ISMG Security Report discusses why Britain is struggling to determine whether to use China's Huawei technology in developing its 5G networks. Plus: An update on a mobile...

One gaping hole in the U.S. government's push to counter Chinese-built 5G telecommunications gear remains the lack of alternatives. For the past year, the U.S. has been pushing its allies, including the Five Eyes intelligence alliance - comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. - to not use Chinese-built networking equipment in their national 5G rollouts or any "Sensitive" networks.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday challenged US opponents of Britain's potential decision to let China's Huawei telecoms giant develop its 5G network to come up with a better choice. The United States and Australia have both banned their 5G providers from using Huawei on security grounds.

Those known risks are twofold: Huawei's coding practices are pisspoor, as Britain's Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre found last year; and there is the ever-present fear that Huawei, or people within Huawei, could be forced to abuse their product knowledge to serve the Chinese regime, perhaps through espionage conducted on UK comms networks or helping with denial-of-service attacks. Although the US have been claiming for years that Huawei poses a threat to communication security, given the well-documented activities of American spy agencies over the last couple of decades this seems like a hollow concern.

British and American officials are meeting as U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government prepares to decide on whether there's a future for Chinese equipment maker Huawei in the country's next-generation telecom networks, his spokesman said Monday. "We have strict controls for how Huawei equipment is currently deployed in the U.K. The government is undertaking a comprehensive review to ensure the security and resilience of 5G and fiber in the U.K.".

A bill introduced this week by Senator Tom Cotton would ban the sharing of intelligence with countries that use Huawei technologies in their fifth generation networks. The United States has long expressed concerns that Huawei equipment may contain backdoors that would allow for the Chinese government to conduct espionage operations, and some European countries are sharing the same concerns.

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