Huawei Could Eavesdrop on 6.5 Million Dutch Cellphone Users Without their Knowledge (theconversation.com) 100
"Chinese technology provider Huawei was recently accused of being able to monitor all calls made using Dutch mobile operator KPN," writes the Conversation. Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares their report:
The revelations are from a secret 2010 report made by consultancy firm Capgemini, which KPN commissioned to evaluate the risks of working with Huawei infrastructure. While the full report on the issue has not been made public, journalists reporting on the story have outlined specific concerns that Huawei personnel in the Netherlands and China had access to security-essential parts of KPN's network - including the call data of millions of Dutch citizens - and that a lack of records meant KPN couldn't establish how often this happened... KPN essentially granted Huawei "administrator rights" to its mobile network by outsourcing work to the Chinese firm.
Legislation is only now catching up to prevent similar vulnerabilities in telecoms security...
Lower revenues force operators to carefully manage costs. This means that operators have been keen to outsource parts of their businesses to third parties, especially since the late 2000s. Large numbers of highly skilled engineers are an expensive liability to have on the balance sheet, and can often appear underused when things are running smoothly... , outsourcing by mobile operators is widespread. And firms in the UK and across Europe have often turned to Huawei to provide IT services and to help build core networks.
In 2010, Huawei was managing security-critical functions of KPN's core network.
Legislation is only now catching up to prevent similar vulnerabilities in telecoms security...
Lower revenues force operators to carefully manage costs. This means that operators have been keen to outsource parts of their businesses to third parties, especially since the late 2000s. Large numbers of highly skilled engineers are an expensive liability to have on the balance sheet, and can often appear underused when things are running smoothly... , outsourcing by mobile operators is widespread. And firms in the UK and across Europe have often turned to Huawei to provide IT services and to help build core networks.
In 2010, Huawei was managing security-critical functions of KPN's core network.
Huawei was recently accused (Score:4, Insightful)
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KPN announced this and that they had replaced the Huawei equipment a couple of months ago.
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In other news I learned my mother's UMX cell phone has Chinese made malware so deeply ingrained that it's not removable unless I root it and put some other os on there. Not only that but they seem to have added something to the default settings app that can download and install adware with no notifications or permissions required. They put out patches that "fix" the issue but it comes back a couple weeks later. Even turning off wifi and 4g do nothing as they turn themselves back on. I've seen and heard of s
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In other news I learned my mother's UMX cell phone has Chinese made malware so deeply ingrained that it's not removable unless I root it and put some other os on there.
Sounds like every Android phone ever. The only way to get rid of the Google spyware is to drop Lineage or similar on them, assuming they're not locked to prevent it.
Yeah but if you buy American... (Score:5, Insightful)
They *will* eavesdrop on you. No two ways about it as the USA's "allies" found out a few years ago.
The question is how do you weigh up the possibility of Chinese snooping vs the evidence of actual American snooping.
Re:Yeah but if you buy American... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Yeah but if you buy American... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll take the Chinese , they have no form in extraordinary renditioning citizens of my country or if tey have they haven't been caught yet , so I may as well have the best,
Haven't been caught yet? Think of the Chinese expats in your country with family and connections in China. They'll be screwed and compromised for what, your freedom to evade American intelligence and extradition for crimes you commit?
Weigh the overt diplomatic risks versus covert risks. If you're more worried about what goes on over American diplomatic channels than what China is willing to do covertly to its expats, then god help you, I think your country deserves what it gets.
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Neither one has been extradited anywhere. Assange is in prison, after fleeing justice earlier because he was afraid to face (Swedish) accusations of rape. Snowden is living in a country that murders dissidents and reporters, having (so far) successfully fled justice. The US hasn't even been able to extradite Huawei's CFO from Canada. In the mean time, China has been arresting western citizens for spurious reasons [theguardian.com] as reprisals against western countries for enforcing their own laws.
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I'll take the Americans, they have a better appreciation for Dutch pornography.
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Not sure how that got labelled "troll". It's the truth.
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Maybe look into what the Americans did to a Greek citizen when he discovered an Greek-American operative snooping high profile politicians and people of high standing on the Greece mobile network after the 2004 Athens Olympics that the Americans helped with security of during the game and then left their own back doors in the ERICSSON mobile equipment well after the games had finished despite saying they had removed it. The head network engineer was murdered for finding the back door.
have a read of: https:/
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Both are snooping, so you decide who you would feel safer with your info, the chinese or americans
Hence the biggest makers of teleco equipment being European.
Re: Yeah but if you buy American... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Yeah but if you buy American... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because suddenly we are getting all these stories about China doing it. In this case people apparently forgot that years after this GCHQ had even greater access to the Dutch phone system, as well as having stolen the root keys to SIM cards manufactured in The Netherlands.
The NSA had a similar capability over some Middle Eastern country, thought you the Iraq.
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All of the WWII Allied countries have been spying on each other since at least the end of the 1940's. I'm not sure why you think this is a recent or shocking development.
I'm not sure why you think that I think it is either recent or shocking. I certainly made no mention of that in my post. My post was about weighing of risks. It was a good post. You should read it. You certainly didn't before writing your reply.
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The problem is the Chinese are rather lax with respect to privacy and security. It simply doesn't exist in Chinese culture.
So Chinese snooping really means your information is being sold or passed around freely because who really cares?
Western nations generally only share their information among friends and try to keep it secret among them.
If you have no problem with China spying on you, then
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Yeah but if you buy American they *will* eavesdrop on you.
do we really need this comment every time there's a story on china-related snooping?
who's the comment for? people who're new to the site? alzheimers?
No two ways about it as the USA's "allies" found out a few years ago.
ayyy. suppose its alzheimers.
Not just Huawei (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless none of this matters. Yes, having a foreign power in control of so much critical infrastructure is a problem. But we're also ignoring the fact that they're buying up huge amounts of property (in particular single family homes). It's business. And as long as the profits are higher we're not going to do anything about it. There's no political will.
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They've bought up lots of real estate in the US, but also in Africa, mostly with an eye toward food production. I recall reading something like half the arable land in Madagascar is now under Chinese ownership. They're also making sure a good chunk of the near east and middle east is in debt to them, through the Belt & Road Initiative. (So much for communism, these are all huge bets on capitalism.)
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I recall reading something like half the arable land in Madagascar is now under Chinese ownership.
I'm far from a China apologist; but "half the arable land in Madagascar" sounds like a sentence someone crafted to sound scary after they couldn't come up with anything actually significant. Madagascar is known for - among other things - not having much useable land. Their arable land is only 5.2% of their entire total land mass.
https://knoema.com/atlas/Madag... [knoema.com]
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So half of a scarce resource then? That doesn't make it sounds any better...
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You're (deliberately?) ignoring a whole lot of context.
The gp post talked about China buying up "lots of real estate in Africa". Then, for supporting evidence, they trotted out an "I recall reading something" anecdote about China owning half the arable land in Madagascar - an island nation, without much arable land, which comprises maybe 2% of Africa's population.
That's not exactly evidence of a broad scheme to control a "scarce resource", to use your term.
Re:Not just Huawei (Score:4, Interesting)
Western Canada was getting bought up pretty fast. Generally the northern part that is still inexpensive. They were using the farmland to grow hay and alfalfa for export to China for dairy production. The locals were upset because all the farm purchases were shipped in and they did not engage with the local communities.
But more recently, all the farms have gone bust. Guess they were losing money. The locals are laughing and saying that it is because they contracted the farm management to unqualified people who really did not care much if the farm succeeded. People tend to work harder and smarter when it is their own land and future they are working for.
I do not know what has been happening in the past year but I will probably get updated the next time I visit my folks.
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It was during the Bush years. Snowden was nowhere to be seen yet and the program which he revealed was still top secret (though some of us have started to hear rumours - f.e. I knew long before Snowden). At that point only one vendor (who shall not be named to protect the guilty) was capable of providing the features required. All other usual suspects did not and had them on the roadmap years ahead.
At that point one of the top-3 USA telecoms provid
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Because Huawei is an R&D powerhouse.
For example, hey developed a lot of the key tech for 5G and have many of the essential parents, as well as their 5G products being a few years ahead of Western ones.
The competition is unpalatable so they decided to try to destroy Huawei. It's lucky that they didn't succeed or China would have been forced to respond in kind.
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Chinese law forces all Chinese companies to spy, or do what ever is asked, by the CCP. China has routinely used it's tax system to steal corporate information about foriegn companies operating in China. Use the power of the state to steal information and steal and extort IP from foreign companies operating in China. It has abuses its power driven foreign businesses bankrupt so that Chinese state owned companies can take them over cheaply. Overseas China has infiltrated and hacked our universities and par
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Chinese law forces all Chinese companies to spy, or do what ever is asked
Do you think that your government doesn't do this? I bet mine does.
Oh you mean exactly like Google or MS or anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, real protip here: Whoever provides your firmware or OS software, has full access to everything on your device.
Are you like those people who post their private stuff on the Internet and then complain when it gets around? "OMG Facebook wasn't private??"
Re: Oh you mean exactly like Google or MS or anyon (Score:2)
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The real issue is handing admin to any contractor. Huawei is irrelevant, and only useful to trigger the racists to bash China
it's a fully confirmed fact.
It's a fully confirmed fact that "admin" outsourcers can do it, not that Huawei did anything to make themselves special, or that Huawei is doing it. If the Dutch company switched to a D
Re: Oh you mean exactly like Google or MS or anyo (Score:2)
Thank you for being rational.
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Outsourcing is also entirely normal in the telco space. The equipment is highly specialised, and the networks don't have in house staff who can manage it so they outsource to the vendor of the equipment - be that huawei, nokia, ericsson etc.
All of these companies will have that capability, as will various individual employees of said companies. If a foreign government wants to monitor comms they just need to plant employees at the right levels within these companies, and i wouldn't be surprised if there wer
Re: Oh you mean exactly like Google or MS or anyo (Score:2)
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"OMG Facebook wasn't private??"
Goddammit, have I been using that site wrong?
Eh, right. The US has been doing it far longer. (Score:5, Informative)
So, about 15 years ago, a big scandal broke out in Greece when it was realized that the Americans, most likely with the help of someone at Ericsson, had installed special software on Ericsson gear to eavesdrop on anyone's cell phone (basically using the system's regular wiretapping capability) - and they had been tapping the entire Greek government, military and more. The US link was not proven "specifically", but the data went to a region triangulated to an area that was pretty much the US Embassy, so it was either from within the embassy or someone hanging out outside of it. That last bit was a joke, I once stopped near the embassy to wait for my girlfriend and an armed guard immediately was sent to see what I was up to, but in any case, that was sort of the excuse of the Greek government to not make a big stink, as they could not really make a big stink out of the whole affair given they did not want to upset the Americans. There was no other trail linking a specific party to the hack, as the network operator (Vodafone) deleted all logs and software when they found out, for reasons that were not attributed to malice, so no one was really punished.
So whenever the Chinese are accused of these things, I feel that it's a welcome addition. I don't want just the Americans (with the help of the Brits or the Swedish or whomever) or the Israelis to overhear my conversations, I'd like some other powers in on the action as well. In fact, I am less inclined to think that the Chinese have an interest in my affairs, as I am neither an Uigur, or a Tibetan, or Taiwanese, Hongkongese etc, it's the western powers that seem to be more interesting in meddling with affairs far from their home, the Chinese so far have been keeping it close...
Re: Eh, right. The US has been doing it far longer (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Eh, right. The US has been doing it far longe (Score:3, Informative)
Not worth the effort (Score:2)
As for the (maybe) thousand or so people in Holland who it would be valuable for any other country to have intelligence on, I reckon that every other country's spying operations already collect that as a matter of course. No matter who built their mobile phone (or will build their 5G) networks.
Re: Not worth the effort (Score:2)
Re: Not worth the effort (Score:2)
It said that Huawei was given or allowed admin rights, which is sort of required if you're going to, you know, administer the network.
Basically, it proved nothing except incompetence and/or carelessness of the NL networks.
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There's only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures and people who can't spell "Dutch".
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How do you feel about "Frisian"?
Outsourcing engineering jobs to China (Score:4, Informative)
highly skilled engineers an expensive liability ?! (Score:1)
"Large numbers of highly skilled engineers are an expensive liability"
WTF?!
They just throw in that statement with no evidence to support it?
And no-one questions it?
Re: highly skilled engineers an expensive liabilit (Score:3)
Re: highly skilled engineers an expensive liabili (Score:3, Informative)
The fact you got them for nearly free and they happily send engineers from mainland China to the US whenever something goes wrong may be a sign that theyâ(TM)re not really interested in your cash.
They gave me a quote back in the day for $40k to wire an entire building with 10/25/40G, the fact it cost more than $40k in labor and the switches were only a few thousand each was a sign something was up.
Re: highly skilled engineers an expensive liabili (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, they ARE interested in your money.
TL;DR They are playing a long game.
About 14 years ago I was in Huawei's payroll in my country, and I know how they operate.
They believe in something called "extending the footprint".
Since at the time they were considered "inferior" to western brands (which they were not) like Cisco, Alcatel or Juniper, and now, they are considered a top notch player that "spies" ( which they do not, or at least they do the same amount of spying that the other brands do), they will heavily subsidize the initial deployment of the gear, in order to "eventually" hook your company up as a customer.
The rationale being that once they become an integral part of your organization, and the organization realizes that they are top notch, and get used to the low prices, it will be really hard and costly to rip and replace their gear. And then they can begin to charge list prices (which are still lower than the list prices of the competition) for goods and services.
It helps them out too that they have a cost advantage over western rivals, so that, even if they are selling below cost, they are not getting as big as a blow as you may think.
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Re: highly skilled engineers an expensive liabil (Score:2)
You're an idiot if you think companies don't sell things at below cost. I bet you're a Tesla customer and, if so, I laugh at you.
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"Could" is not "has" (Score:2, Interesting)
The article points that Huawei **COULD** have eavedropped on Dutch communications.
On the other hand, USA **HAD BEEN CAUGHT** eavedropping on Angela Merkel communications...
Basically, I'm trusting Huawei more than the USA on that point...
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WTF?
You're not worried about government spying?
Obviously you're not aware of how incompetent Governments can be..
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I am not worried about government spying. I am worried about criminal spying.
Please make up your mind.
Re: "Could" is not "has" (Score:2)
Why is this "flamebait"?
Moderators here are idiots.
every provider can spy (Score:2)
Nokia/Lucent can do it, Ericsson can do it, Huawei and ZTE can do it, Samsung can do it, NEC can do it... You get the drift...
The feature is called "Lawfull Inception", and is a legal requirement in many conutries. This can be used and abused by the equipment provider, telecom operator, or goverment.
Just for one example, of the beaten path, the Colombian Govt' did it (Google "Chuzasos", and then use google translate on the results) to spy on oposition politicians...
Also, the /. headline is missleading, as t
Please stop (Score:2)
Negative cannot be proven. You can always say someone might be doing the wrong thing, exploiting the fact that no one can prove the opposite. This makes YOU look bad.
Re: Please stop (Score:3)
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"Dutch company gives root to contractors" would be an acceptable shaming. "Chinese company accused of spying on all Dutch people" is racist clickbait.
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all part of the new cold war narrative vs China.
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This is normal at every telco...
This equipment is quite niche, being that only telcos will operate such equipment, and staff who know the equipment well enough to manage it are in short supply. Typically they will contract the vendor to manage the equipment for them, and the vendors require privileged access to the equipment in question in order to actually do their jobs.
But to put it into perspective, even if the provider managed their own equipment it's still running code supplied by the vendor which prob
Re: Please stop (Score:3)
Oh Noes! Admins had admin rights!!! (Score:2)
What a stupid narrative.
There really should be some legal requirement preventing this sort of FUD reporting.
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And we know the Dutch as the largest threat China faces are massed at the Chinese border and ready to invade. The Chinese better listen to each and every person in the Netherlands to uncover their scheming and conniving. Also, they may be manipulating the price of tulip bulbs again.
the Dutch news (Score:4, Informative)
As for anti Chinese sentiment, many Chinese in the Netherlands have spoken out anonymously to say they can't speak freely out of fear for their families in China or Hong Kong. Please also keep in mind that the Dutch parliament is the first in the EU to call the Chinese actions against the Uighurs genocide.
There's also a story recently unfolding of a university in Groningen that's sponsored with Chinese funds, with the requirement not to be critical of anything related to the Chinese government.
BTW the first link I read (use online translation services if you don't read Dutch): https://nos.nl/artikel/2377038... [nos.nl]
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And... (Score:2)
How many can have their phone records by such criminal groups as the NSA and the CIA?
If Chinese spooks or US ones read my, or anyone else's. stuff and conclude that I an no threat to them, what happens to my records?
I suspect that the Chinese ones will just store them somewhere. The US ones, however, will probably pass them on to someone else. This will either be to some corporation somewhere or to other crooks. They will be hacked or sold.
administrator rights grant administrator abilities (Score:1)
Big whoop (Score:1)
Could have... (Score:2)
You get what you pay for (Score:1)