Analyst: China Has Backdoors to the World’s Telecoms

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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According to a report from a former Pentagon analyst, the Chinese government has access to about 80% of all the communications in the world and is working on gaining access to the remaining 20%. Two Chinese telecommunications companies operating around the globe are working closely with the Chinese government to provide proprietary information according to the report.

The Chinese government reportedly has "pervasive access" to some 80 percent of the world's communications, thanks to backdoors it has ordered to be installed in devices made by Huawei and ZTE Corporation.
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Sounds like a good reason to ban imports of anything made by those 2 companies.
 
I admit, every time I see the name Huawei and ZTE my brain automatically translates those names to "Chinese Military".
 
niconx said:
I admit, every time I see the name Huawei and ZTE my brain automatically translates those names to "Chinese Military".
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Over here, besides that, ZTE is also associated with a major corruption scandal over here. involving hundreds of millions of dollars for a project that would cost only 20% of that total, i.e. ZTE and certain government officials are sharing the 80% amongst themselves.
 
China has access to 80% of the worlds Telecoms, and Americans are thinking about sex. No wonder we're losing.
 
So happy we're so worried about terrorism to the point of practically getting a proctological exam when we get on an airplane, yet hey lets welcome all of this technology into our country!
 
I find this story dubious. Any backdoor would not just be exploited by state actors, but by independent crackers who stumble onto them. It's a vulnerability, and any vulnerability will get exploited eventually. Assuming this story is even true, if they have a tap on 80% of the world's communications (really, stop and think about that for a second) that is so much volume that it's almost meaningless. No one could sift through that much data, so they have to build up massive facilities to sort through what is and isn't useful. Once you have assembled the kind of people for that endeavor, you're not too far off from having expended the kind of assets you would need for a top-notch cracking team. It makes things a little more predictable, but it really shifts the work to another part of the chain.

As for the independent patriotic amateur spies, they probably forward so much crap back to the PRC, that they can't even come close to getting through it all. You could steal the blueprints for the stealth bomber, and it will probably get stuck in a pile underneath 5,000 mundane pieces of crap they could have probably Googled and found in about 15 minutes.

This is the information age, it is filled with unimaginable amounts of raw data. The trick isn't gathering as much shit as you can, but sorting everything out into something useful. The US military is far more targeted in its approach and it still takes them years to find a single person or execute a covert plan. This is hard stuff and there is NO shortcut.

Also, a modern weapons system is about seamless integration and flawless execution. Just seeing an F-35, or getting a laundry list of parts isn't going to get you anywhere close to fielding as potent of a weapon. There's a reason why that jet is costing a trillion dollars, and it's not just bureaucratic waste.
 
There seems to be so much scare mongering going on, especially towards Huawei. I call bullshit on this, unless somebody offers verifiable proof of this.

However, true or not, do you think that this does not happen with other companies and governments around the world? It's going on, im sure. Everybody that wants to know what your doing, already knows.
 
Lots of electronic products have backdoors, but many are just engineering backdoors to better facilitate and automate testing and debugging at the factory. As to weather the backdoor can also be exploited and compromises security depends on what exactly the backdoor is.
 
Fear not, they're nowhere near the 1000% coverage the U.S. agencies handle (with every other ping being a tap source)!
Haha, 80% really? From just 2 companies almost nobody ever hear of before today, whom almost no IT admin or ISP would add to their infrastructure, assuming they somehow got financial approval for it, and who likely cover only a fraction of the Chinese market? And the people who are smart enough to know the equipment is good and cheap and buy it would suddenly be stupid enough not to detect any backdoor attempt to tap their communications?
 
Chimel said:
Fear not, they're nowhere near the 1000% coverage the U.S. agencies handle (with every other ping being a tap source)!
Haha, 80% really? From just 2 companies almost nobody ever hear of before today, whom almost no IT admin or ISP would add to their infrastructure, assuming they somehow got financial approval for it, and who likely cover only a fraction of the Chinese market? And the people who are smart enough to know the equipment is good and cheap and buy it would suddenly be stupid enough not to detect any backdoor attempt to tap their communications?
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:confused:

Huawei and ZTE are HUGE. If you work in telecom doing anything related to infrastructure and you haven't heard of them you should probably be looking for a new job.
 
@Paul_Johnson I don't work in telecoms, but yeah, I read the original WND article where it says Huawei comes second right behind Ericsson, so you're right, they're probably very present in telcos.
I correct to mean they're virtually an unknown brand even for (non-telecoms) IT people, unlike Cisco, for instance.

But the whole article reeks, the 80% figures seems to come from data such as Chinese equipment was sold to 140 countries or 45 out of the 50 biggest telcos. But the number of countries or telcos does not mean that 80% of all communications go through this Chinese equipment.
The financing part also seems to be made up. Do the [H] readers know of any purchase of Chinese equipment that does not have to be repaid for years?
And there's of course not a shred of evidence that there are any backdoors or that they have been used. All that the article says when you dig into it is that there is a "potential" for tapping.
The two so-called back-door technologies they mention are Deep Packet Inspection, which I am sure is a feature present in all American equipment too, since some American ISPs implemented it at some stage, and VPN (Very Private Network, sic). I am glad to see they know even less about computers than I do about telecoms. ^-^
 
wtiger said:
Sounds like a good reason to ban imports of anything made by those 2 companies.
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How about banning all imports made by any Chinese company? Or at least imposing heavy taxes on them. China has been steadily robbing us of jobs,they've been waging an economic war on us. They are a military dictatorship that as much a threat to us as Russia ever was. It's way past time to treat them as such,and tell our politicians exactly that. They're making trade policy based on the will of big business instead of the welfare of the country,and supporting a regime that wants to undermine us by any means available.
 
michael.pa2 said:
How about banning all imports made by any Chinese company? Or at least imposing heavy taxes on them. China has been steadily robbing us of jobs,they've been waging an economic war on us. They are a military dictatorship that as much a threat to us as Russia ever was. It's way past time to treat them as such,and tell our politicians exactly that. They're making trade policy based on the will of big business instead of the welfare of the country,and supporting a regime that wants to undermine us by any means available.
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Lol. You're funny.
 
I don't know, I tend to believe stories like this.
Its human nature.
And why the hell NOT do it, it can be a mayor advantage.
China is in a flimsy position in many aspects, the thing is they KNOW it, they don't seem to be fooling themselves, I don't know that is how I interpret thing anyways (news and such, articles here and there)
They probably believe the US has complete access and control of most of telecom already. (We probably do)
 
nobody cant stop china
they are masters of plagiarism , and they keep rising up levels of it.
 
michael.pa2 said:
How about banning all imports made by any Chinese company? Or at least imposing heavy taxes on them. China has been steadily robbing us of jobs,they've been waging an economic war on us. They are a military dictatorship that as much a threat to us as Russia ever was. It's way past time to treat them as such,and tell our politicians exactly that. They're making trade policy based on the will of big business instead of the welfare of the country,and supporting a regime that wants to undermine us by any means available.
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Is it really true that if you watch enough Fox TV you end up thinking like this?
Serious question.
 
Maybe from a higher level standpoint they 'control' 'something'. I highly doubt they control things down to a transport level though.

About the only method of control they could have over major transport services is if they have some sort of radio-input on all the Juniper, Cisco, and Sycamore ODXC switches as all these pieces of equipment are built in China. Thereby through the method of a certain radio signal these devices would be shut down. However, this would not be to total benefit of China as they would also loose any grasp within the network at this point anyways.
 
Just like everything else concerning China it seems, it'll just get brushed off until it comes back to bite us in the ass.
 
I seriously need to facepalm when reading about the 'military dictatorship' part. michael.pa2 needs to read moar before going into why China is dangerous.

Espionage is nothing new, NKVD/KGB had ears all over the world, and in all echelons of power during the Cold War (I will give you that for the Russian menace talk). Honestly, if the Chinese would go as far as to have party cadre eavesdropping on one another, why would they not listen in on the world... (Bo Xilai, former Chongqing party head trying to bug the Poliburo bigwig when they visited his turf is one example)

Huawei is a spinoff to the PLA military-industrial complex, so don't have any illusion about their funding and the power behind their executives. What should be noted however, is that every part of the Chinese Military cadre is in on making a buck or two from business, so part of what they do with all that intelligence is to make better products while spending less time and money on R&D... which is commercial espionage.
 
News flash, anything electronic manufactured by a Chinese company has a vulnerability built in, as per the glorious empire of China's orders.

Funny that a country that has everyone by the balls has some sort of leverage:rolleyes: USA had nukes (got rid of some, although still has three times as many as anyone else), Britain stuck a flag in everything (later took the flags back, they needed a wash...and we got upset about the tea episode), also wiped out anyone that didn't like the flag, or in the case of Hong Kong gave them 100 pounds and a few crates of Whiskey (hey we learned that one from America, the flag thing was working well), and bought our way in for a century.

China manufactures almost everyone's crap, and they could easily just decide to stop doing that (although they really wouldn't as they need the money), it's a good threat as everyone else got rid of their factories in favour shoddy labour & safety laws, and cheap workers. If that threat doesn't work then they can screw with everyone's communications.
 
20 years ago we were up in arms about Japan manufacturing and importing everything into the United States and now China's doing it and that makes them our big bad enemy and potential World War III opponent.

:rolleyes:

Why do we care what goes on in China?
 
Azhar said:
20 years ago we were up in arms about Japan manufacturing and importing everything into the United States and now China's doing it and that makes them our big bad enemy and potential World War III opponent.

:rolleyes:

Why do we care what goes on in China?
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We care because there is a global economy.
 
slh28 said:
Is it really true that if you watch enough Fox TV you end up thinking like this?
Serious question.
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I don't put much stock in any of the TV news reporting. I do put stock in the history of regimes like China's. And the propensity of people to ignore history until it once again repeats itself.
 
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