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
On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> wrote:
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.
both cisco and juniper do this as well.. with phone-home full show-tech-equivalent data collection systems... all pushed into an internal DB ready for marketing/etc... I'm sure other vendors (ALU/etc) all do this as well... the addition of 'Dedicated Support Engineers' sitting in your faciltiy is neat, but also not 'new' wrt cisco/juniper. (I also happen to think that this is probably the method most likely used to exfil data of interest)
On Thu, 13 Jun 2013, Bryan Fields wrote:
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".
Why would anyone outside of the US agree to have US products in their network, using the same rationale? At least with China they don't pretend they're not spying on our own population. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
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
Apologies for making what could be construed as an off topic, political comment, but doesn't everyone in the USA know by now that the PRC represents a dagger aimed at the economic and national security of America? A military invasion in slow motion as it were? David On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 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
On 2013-06-13 13:01, david peahi wrote:
Apologies for making what could be construed as an off topic, political comment, but doesn't everyone in the USA know by now that the PRC represents a dagger aimed at the economic and national security of America? A military invasion in slow motion as it were?
Please realize that one can make that statement from every side of the fence. It all just depends on which side of the fence you are born, if you consider one thing "good" or "evil" and as recent events show, you should be looking a bit closer at the home base... And now after this whole flood of messages about this... lets please go back to operations, thanks! Greets, Jeroen
Last I heard NANOG stands for North American Network Operators Group. Anti-American comments are not welcome here.. David On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Jeroen Massar <jeroen@massar.ch> wrote:
On 2013-06-13 13:01, david peahi wrote:
Apologies for making what could be construed as an off topic, political comment, but doesn't everyone in the USA know by now that the PRC represents a dagger aimed at the economic and national security of America? A military invasion in slow motion as it were?
Please realize that one can make that statement from every side of the fence.
It all just depends on which side of the fence you are born, if you consider one thing "good" or "evil" and as recent events show, you should be looking a bit closer at the home base...
And now after this whole flood of messages about this... lets please go back to operations, thanks!
Greets, Jeroen
On 2013-06-13 14:28, david peahi wrote:
Last I heard NANOG stands for North American Network Operators Group. Anti-American comments are not welcome here..
(IMHO there was nothing 'anti-american' about my statement, though I guess it completely depends on what the definition of that would be; I am sure that a more longer standing NANOG member will personally kick me in the head to enlighten me if it was though...) Even though NANOG starts with the letters "NA", it is the most important public Internet operator forum, worldwide, hence why NANOG also has a lot of members from around the rest of world and gets input, and heck, presentations from the rest of the world, because that little Internet thing is worldwide. Also note that any impact happening on the Internet in the US has wide-spread consequences to the rest of the world and a back-door in gear in the US will be a back-door for the rest of the world too and they will be more than happy to know about that and will act and decide in similar fashion. But I think I wrote something about the O part of NANOG.... thus I'll /dev/null further list responses to this as it will just end up in a more useless flamewar. Greets, Jeroen (Written from the SFO area... not from a hotel in HK ;)
On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 2:28 PM, david peahi <davidpeahi@gmail.com> wrote:
Last I heard NANOG stands for North American Network Operators Group. Anti-American comments are not welcome here..
As a matter of fact, North America includes 23 unique countries, not just the United States - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_america And, if you look at the NewNOG bylaws - http://www.nanog.org/governance/documents/NANOG-Bylaws-October2011.pdf - nothing is mentioned about disparaging any specific country. In fact the mission statement seems to be "The purpose of NANOG is to provide forums in the North American region for education and the sharing of knowledge for the Internet operations community." Leslie David
On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Jeroen Massar <jeroen@massar.ch> wrote:
On 2013-06-13 13:01, david peahi wrote:
Apologies for making what could be construed as an off topic, political comment, but doesn't everyone in the USA know by now that the PRC represents a dagger aimed at the economic and national security of America? A military invasion in slow motion as it were?
Please realize that one can make that statement from every side of the fence.
It all just depends on which side of the fence you are born, if you consider one thing "good" or "evil" and as recent events show, you should be looking a bit closer at the home base...
And now after this whole flood of messages about this... lets please go back to operations, thanks!
Greets, Jeroen
participants (8)
-
Bryan Fields -
Christopher Morrow -
david peahi -
Jeroen Massar -
Leslie -
Mikael Abrahamsson -
Randy Bush -
Warren Bailey