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Huawei ‘may have eavesdropped on Dutch mobile network’s calls’

116 points| kumarharsh | 4 years ago |theguardian.com

56 comments

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[+] sschueller|4 years ago|reply
Interesting how this 3 day old story is getting twisted more and more. Can we stick to the facts?

Huawei was used for outsourcing, Huawei obviously has root access. If you outsource your IT to a company with known ties to a foreign government you can't complain about them having sensitive access.

[+] varispeed|4 years ago|reply
Just because you have a root access, it doesn't mean you can just make yourself at home and grab any data you want.
[+] mc32|4 years ago|reply
Yeah I guess this is like having Kaspersky and then complaining that data was exfiltrated to the FSB or something. Or you know, know who you are dealing with when you outsource.
[+] contravariant|4 years ago|reply
I don't think the people complaining are the ones who chose to give root access to a company with known ties to a foreign government.
[+] NicoJuicy|4 years ago|reply
Huawei had employees onsite in the netherlands for access. Unauthorized full network access happened from China.

I do agree it's again here and shouldn't be anymore. But don't claim it's normal, the audit reported it as not.

KPN even hid the report for 10 years, because it was afraid of it's contents to go public.

Ps. Yes, i speak dutch, so I read the original article on Volkskrant.nl . More information is probably getting out soon as it's being inquired currently by their government.

[+] nottorp|4 years ago|reply
Funny, a couple days ago the title was "Huawei spied on Dutch bla bla". Today it's "may have spied".

The original article (well, the translation bondarchuk posted here) says they had the access. Not that they did anything with it.

[+] NicoJuicy|4 years ago|reply
You're tldr; is a bit wrong.

They had unauthorized access, which means they used it. It's not clear for what currently, that's why it describes the scope of access.

They also found that the application can tap entire phone calls, which was forbidden.

Edit:

What do you think the following means ( Dutch is my native tongue, lol):

> ‘Ongecontroleerde en ongeautoriseerde toegang vanuit China heeft na 28 oktober 2009 daadwerkelijk plaatsgevonden’, vermeldt het rapport in april 2010.

Translation: Unchecked and unauthorized access has taken place from china after 28 October 2009.

Original article: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

[+] elric|4 years ago|reply
It's interesting to see how this speculative piece keeps popping up, whereas GCHQ's THREE YEAR long hack [1] of Belgium's largest ISP was largely ignored. China bashing is easier than Five-Eyes bashing?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Socialist

[+] planck01|4 years ago|reply
How do you mean 'was largely ignored'? It was headline news for almost a year during the snowden period. It still is discussed occasionally and both us and uk are trusted less by eu countries because of it.
[+] LatteLazy|4 years ago|reply
It's quite incredible really. We have undeniable proof the US spies on the EU, phone taps it's leaders, and uses the info to help US companies.

But the stories are all about a Chinese company once having done a thing they were asked to do...

[+] jariel|4 years ago|reply
We know the US spies and so does China - this is not news.

We do not have evidence the NSA is doing industrial espionage.

Moreover, this is Huawei, not technically 'the state' and it's about the fact they are related to the state - and - they've had incredible access as part of their normal operations which is questionable.

China is the most aggressive and active state sponsor of hacking and they 100% do it for purposes of industrial espionage.

Literally 'leaving the door open' to every phone in a nation to a state-backed entity seems unthinkable in 2021.

It's probably going to be best if everyone uses local carrier gear and consulting entities for this kind of work the advantage of 'totally free trade' doesn't seem to be more than what would be lost otherwise.

[+] Out_of_Characte|4 years ago|reply
What no. How did you even get to that conclusion?
[+] dathinab|4 years ago|reply
It's still the same news and it's still:

- could have eavesdropped - likely wouldn't have been found out - but there is no indication that they did so

In the end Huawei (the company) has no benefits and IMHO no intention to spy on the Dutch mobile network. The problem is that the employees of Huawei, independent of nationality, might be a different story. (Or more precise China or the USA pressuring employees or installing "their people" in the right technical positions).

But as a side note that is also true for the USA, not just China.

It's just that for all western/(somewhat proper) democratic countries the US is much closer ideological and political then China, even with all the faults the USA has.

Like e.g China is a "de-facto" one party system (theoretical they have more) and the US is a "de-facto" two party system. Which is better but still not proper democratic.

[+] de6u99er|4 years ago|reply
Those articles are just FUD.
[+] egberts1|4 years ago|reply
so Guardian retranslated Dutch strict wordings into English loose wordings. tsk tsk tsk.
[+] zadwang|4 years ago|reply
This could be said of ANY telecom providers. It is all speculation without a shred of fact.
[+] jijji|4 years ago|reply
It sounds pretty damaging considering the telecom provider hid the report for ten years.
[+] jariel|4 years ago|reply
There's some debate about the degree to which the authorization could have been abused, but it today's world it's just hard to imagine how such rights and authorization could be granted in the first place.