Is that also not possibly the case with Cisco, Juniper, XYZ network equipment vendors? If the Chinese are doing it, I would imagine we (along with our pals) are doing it as well. It'll be interesting to see what NSA dox this guy drops in the coming days and weeks ahead. All of the TV pundits were screaming Hong Kong was going to give him up, until he released information on a program relating to penetrating foreign government networks. I think the dynamics of China and their behavior after the release(s) will factor in greatly into contract awards in the future. Granted he hasn't released any information on compromising physical hardware for the moment, but if that were to come to light it would murder .cn imports of gear almost immediately. If we were doing it, and they weren't .. They will now. At the end of the day, we are almost ALWAYS more than willing to give them our IP and state secrets in order to (a) buy something really cheap or (b) sell something really expensive. I'm sure it's completely understood within the intelligence communities what capabilities the Chinese have, mostly because we probably gave or sold it to them at some point. They haven't ALWAYS made their own hardware, and they still bring quite a bit in through creative channels. On 6/13/13 12:28 PM, "Bryan Fields" <Bryan@bryanfields.net> wrote:
On 6/13/13 1:35 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
They are a state controlled company. You think the PRC's party members dont call the shots? I've been to Beijing for work.. I can assure you the government has a very known presence through the private community. Often times, graduates of their state run colleges enter the "private" sector to help their collective needs. China is an odd place, but in my opinion often they are underestimated. Look at their stealth plane, that's a good starting point on their ability to borrow technology and implement it quickly. It's about numbers over there, not sense.
My objection to ZTE/Hauwei when I was at a cellular telco was just this. I said "there was no way I can agree with Chinese nationals having unfettered access to our network".
Sure the CLI was crap/nonexistent and full of bugs, but I never thought the product was phoning home. I assumed there was a backdoor, like every other product and this was dealt with via ACL's and bastion boxes.
I did not think highly of the product, and did not want to select it. However ZTE made the offer to put 6 support engineers in our main switch office 24/7 for the first year, and open an office down the street. Our SVP creamed himself over this level of "support" and they got the contract.
It's an awesome idea, build gear that's cheap enough you can't say no to, and use the support personnel as spies. It provides a perfect cover story to cycle in loads of engineers. Only one or two does the support, the rest can observe/record/share the internal details of everything they see.
They are playing our love of "But Wait There's More!". Give us everything at deep discounts or for free and receive direct access to the core of every major telecom company on the planet. For a few hundred million dollars the Chinese government has intelligence on anyone or anything world wide, and their agents are welcomed with open arms.
-- Bryan Fields
727-409-1194 - Voice 727-214-2508 - Fax http://bryanfields.net