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.
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 They do maintain unpublished 0 day exploits though, so it could also be both.
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.
I don’t think the US Govt backdoors phones anymore … mostly because they don’t need to. They find other ways to get the information, like warrantless surveillance of Google and Apple notification servers.
The other reason I don’t think it happens is that there are just too many security researchers trying to find exploits and backdoors. Also it’s pretty well known that any backdoor can be used against you. The NSA has an interest in domestic phones being secure.
Granted, international models might have some alterations/backdoors… Even then, that would be egg on the face that they don’t really need if they got caught with a backdoor that applied only to international phones.
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
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.
You don’t really want a device linked to any third party to be fair.
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.
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if you work in a field that may be interesting to Chinese competition.
So, nearly everything then
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They certainly have little interest in you if you’re a waiter at some shitty restaurant, sure. But do you really think they don’t target the agricultural, construction or food industries and the technologies they may be developing?
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I’m talking about the industry, not the individual.
So far, all of Huawei’s found potential backdoors turned out to be them being extremely terrible at writing secure software or developing secure operating procedures.
That’s how you write a backdoor in 2023 “oops… Guess I made a mistake again”
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What you want to look for is a pattern of similar bugs that result in the same end result, e.g. https://t.me/durov/196
It can also just be bad programmers but that’s kind of the point … plausible deniability
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.
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.
Probably, but iPhones and Android have them for the Five Eyes and anyone else who is willing to pay/push for laws to make it happen. All you do with a phone is pick your poison, do you want China to spy on you, or America, the UK, or some other government or company who then sells it to the highest bidder.
Any cell phone, dumb or smart, is a tracking device. The smarter it is, the better it is as snooping on you. Doesn’t matter how or where the phone’s hardware is made, it’s going to track you without consent. You just need to ask “Am I worried about China or am I worried about another government?” to even “If the backdoor is big enough, can third parties get me too as I walk by on the street?”
Just as much as the US government has.
Are you the FBI? You have to tell us, you can’t lie.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a Huawei or some American phone, China, USA and others will spy on you no matter what phone you choose only the means differ. If you buy a Huawei china will have backdoors in your phone and the USA will buy all your info and if you get an American phone the USA will have backdoors and china will buy the data.
Also I find the focus on china kinda weird. I ultimately don’t want anyone stealing my data, not even the USA. Just like china the USA has been involved in mass surveillance and a lot of war crimes. For example American soldiers have been found guilty of rapping and killing children. From Wikipedia (United States war crimes > war on terror > Iraq war):
On 12 March 2006, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl named Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was raped and subsequently murdered along with her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.
After all of that I want to ask you one question, do you really want the USA sterling your data?
Also what you answer that question with doesn’t matter since both china and the USA will be stealing your data no matter if you want it or which phone you buy.
As a final note I should maybe mention that I’m not American if you haven’t figured that out yet. Also please don’t accuse me of spreading Chinese propaganda. I’m advocating against the USA and the CIA, not for china.
Also sorry for being so political in a kind of not that political thread.
So if i want China to not have my data i should by a chinese phone?
/s
You’re missing the point entirely. In the US, companies can take the federal government to court to stop them. When agencies installed backdoors on Cisco equipment it was done through intercepting hardware through carriers, and individually installing them on targeted hardware. Not forcing Cisco to hand over access to every router they sold. You can argue about whether they should do that at all, but it’s not the same.
But it sounds like you are advocating for china. Look how much you wrote about another country when someone asked specifically about china and a Chinese phone manufactured in china.
My point is just that I don’t want anyone spying on me and it doesn’t matter if the one spying is the US, china, french or russia. They have nothing to do with my personal data.
If Lenovo’s multiple rootkit fiascos are anything to go by for Chinese-corporation-designed electronics, yes.
