It wouldn’t be very secret if it was published on the internet. It’s definitely a credible concern given the level of control China demands of companies operating in the country. The US also essentially has backdoors into most communication, and possibly phones as well, so it’s not that crazy for China to also have them.
China is also very aggressive in hacking into companies. Even if they didn’t have a custom backdoor, them finding a way in and essentially banning Huawei from fixing it, is another option.
This is the exact reason Lenovo is the way that it is. The US didn’t trust them not to have a back door and so they grew US operations to keep from getting banned. This has all played out before
I was under the impression it was was common knowledge/rumor that Cisco hardware all has a US installed backdoor. Huawai having a backdoor specifically wasn’t the big revelation/concern. It was that it was Chinese/foreign government controlled. Everyone puts backdoors in, it’s just a matter of only having friendly backdoors you can control.
The rumor probably exists, but the US seems to just bully companies into getting access rather than building back doors into equipment, based on available evidence. They do maintain unpublished 0 day exploits though, so it could also be both.
@fishos It is emphatically not common knowledge. I’m reading everyone asserting that such and such governments have backdoors on phones or whatever device, but you’re the first person to cite an example. If you have more, I would appreciate you sharing those.
Cisco backdoors are common knowledge though:
@YoorWeb Thank you for sharing the links! I was very unaware of this.
Let me do some digging and try to find you some sources when I’m not stuck at work. I know there are Wikipedia articles for the literal rooms inside of telecoms that are known to be government taps into telecom and internet infrastructure. I just can’t remember the room names off the top of my head. I’ll come back with a few different sources to hopefully get you going down the right rabbit hole.
Thank you so much for your kindness!
Yes.
Also phones made in the US have back doors that the US government can access. It’s not really secret.
It’s secret like Area 51 is secret. We know it’s there, we know the government is doing something with it, but we don’t know fully what, when, why, or how.
Why do these threads always circle back to the US? It’s always the obnoxious “USA bad because other country bad”
And no, I’m not American
It’s just pointing out that chinese are not the only people to spy on you
I’m aware, but if that’s the answer why not include other nations, then? It’s always just the US and I find that very curious and kind of annoying when any criticism is drawn to China on Lemmy. It’s always the same knee-jerk reaction.
Because from what I see, the degree to which that happens is kind of wide and involves way more countries than just the US and China.
Source
deleted by creator
They’re definitely grabbing analytics and statistics. But so is AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Google, Microsoft.
If the Chinese government asked any of those other companies to give them all the data they have on you in particular, They probably tell them to get bent.
But if the US government told them to do it, they would comply and then have a gag order slapped against them to keep them from telling you it happened.
Huawei is beholden to the Chinese government. So it works kind of in the opposite way.
If the Chinese government asked any of those other companies to give them all the data they have on you in particular, They probably tell them to get bent.
More likely they’ll send an invoice. They’re already selling your data to them. (And everyone else.)
If the Chinese government asked any of those other companies to give them all the data they have on you in particular, They probably tell them to get bent.
Haha what? You think there’s any chance in hell that China doesn’t get what they want from any US company? Check out this video, this is what happens when a random American says something China doesn’t like. Now go ahead and picture those companies not bending over backwards to kiss Xi’s ass if it means affecting the bottom line.
Short answer is “likely”.
If you work in a field with sensitive data (financial, healthcare, technology, politics) you don’t get a phone designed by a China-government owned company.
I upgrade to “most likely”.
You don’t really want a device linked to any third party to be fair.
I upgrade to “most likely”.
I don’t have any specific knowledge regarding the specific question, but:
I would rather expect a frontdoor.
😂
If Lenovo’s multiple rootkit fiascos are anything to go by for Chinese-corporation-designed electronics, yes.
Most of Lenovo’s rootkit fiascos are due to lack of vetting bundleware providers though; Huawei is actually unlikely to have a backdoor in their phones. Their 5G infrastructure on the other hand is known to have at least two different potential backdoors designed in such a way that they may just be a chain of unfortunate vulnerabilities. Or not.
Not a backdoor, a loading dock
not trying to argue ‘both-sides’, but most likely so does the US government/five eyes/whatever for android (and sometimes ios)
I mean, it’s written into law in Australia https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryption-law-is-a-threat-to-global-privacy/
And you can be sure that data is shared with 5eyes.
Go on about this five eyes
The Five Eyes is an Anglosphere intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
they share intelligence and personal information of citizens between each other.
there also exists ‘nine eyes’ and ‘fourteen eyes’
Curious what your into that led you to that
i looked it up.
On the same vein, do wo know if Intel Management Engine is a NSA backdoor?
I keep hearing about the potential of it beeing a back door, but haven’t heard an exploit using it roaming about the interwebsIt’s not known to be a backdoor, but it’s a juicy attack surface that customers are largely ignorant of and provides little consumer benefit. If I were an NSA employee and my boss handed me a blank check to develop a preboot exploit for Intel PCs, I’d start with IME.
Is there an IME equivalent on AMD cpus?
The platform security processor, PSP. There were some mumblings of open sourcing the implementation details of it in 2017 or so, but that never happened, so it’s still a black box that is potentially exploitable.
Probably. Also, look at myactivity.google.com . Any info you have there can be handed over to a government
Well I’m fucked. Thanks for sharing that link, I had no idea Google tracked what time I used Signal messenger.
Not sure what to do with this information but I didn’t realize it was that granular.
Yeah. You can turn it off or set it to delete, and I think legally Google do have to keep their word on that thankfully, but some weird shenanigans happened with incognito mode on Chrome
Probably a garage door.
Revolving door.
if they don’t, it’s the only phones without.
Have no idea…all I know is, everything is manufatcured in the PCR.
PRC*
PCR is funny, though
Just as much as the US government has.
They all have some kind of backdoors that governments exploit. If I could buy a phone and use it knowing that only the Chinese government could spy on me with it, I would absolutely get that. I live in the US though. If I lived in China I would prefer the US-only spy phone.
