NSA and Chinese telcom giant Huawei

[thewayne]

So, a few years ago a Chinese telcom company started selling network switches and routers around the world. Their name is Huawei and their founder is a former officer of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. A scream went up throughout the USA that their routers would come already compromised and the Chinese government could listen in to all our network traffic and copy all our s3kritz.

Little did we know that the NSA was already hacking our routers and listening to all our network traffic.

Well, it turns out that the NSA also attacked Huawei to get their documentation and source code, so they could hack their equipment when it's installed in countries like North Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Hypocrite much?

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/nsa_hacks_huawe.html

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/03/22/226205/nsa-hacked-huawei-stole-source-code

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-spied-on-chinese-government-and-networking-firm-huawei-a-960199.html

The problem is further compounded by something called software-defined networks (SDN). Normally networks are configured in routers and through cabling, but these SDNs break that model, and apparently the NSA does not yet know how to cope with them.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/03/how-huawei-became-nsa-nightmare/

Comments

[silveradept]

The things the government will do in the name of supposedly protecting us - we should probably assume that between thieves and the government, all of our data has been compromised.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

....or is in the process of being compromised. Sometimes makes me want to cut all the cables, get only a landline, and crawl into a hole.

[silveradept]

Even then, someone would be spying on us all the time - it's like Facebook creating shadow profiles of people who exist and are referred to, but haven't signed up with them,