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28/03/2019

Huawei Pulled Up By UK Over Network Security, More Flaws Revealed




Huawei Pulled Up By UK Over Network Security, More Flaws Revealed
There was new pressure on the Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei in the United Kingdom after the company was publicly rebuked by Britain over charges that the company had been for long not been able to fix defects in its mobile network equipment and the revelation of new “significant technical issues”. Huawei has already been troubled by allegations by some western countries that its equipment is used by Chinese agencies to spy on western countries.
 
The persistent issues with the company’s software development had brought “significantly increased risk to UK operators”, said the government-led board that oversees vetting of Huawei gear in Britain in a report published on Thursday.
 
“No material progress” had been made by Huawei in mitigating some security defects and the board had lost confidence in the ability of Huawei to implement that proposed solutions to resolve the “underlying defects”, said the board – which includes officials from Britain’s GCHQ communications intelligence agency.
 
There has been public voicing of concern over the issue that Huawei’s equipment could be used by Beijing for spying or sabotage, by officials in the United States and elsewhere, and the very vocal and public comments made by the board in the UK has added to its woes in the western world.
 
Huawei said that the concerns expressed by the UK’s board was taken very seriously by it and that the problems highlighted in the in the report “provide vital input for the ongoing transformation of our software engineering capabilities”.
 
An announcement of investing of more than $2 billion in the UK to built up capacity to address some of the concerns that had been earlier expressed by Britain was made by Huawei last year. But in the same breath, the company had also said that it would take up to 5 years to see the tangible outcome of the efforts of its investment.
 
 “These findings are about basic engineering competence and cyber security hygiene that give rise to vulnerabilities that are capable of being exploited by a range of actors,” the government-led board said in a report.
 
“NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) does not believe that the defects identified are a result of state interference,” it added.
 
The report said that now the time for the British officials was to see the proof of significant change. The board also added that Huawei had not been able to fulfil the commitment on security that it had made way back in 2012.
 
“The evidence of sustained change is especially important as similar strongly worded commitments from Huawei in the past have not brought about any discernible improvements,” it said.
 
A number of new technical issues with Huawei equipment were identified in the report that ran into more than 40 pages. It has also revealed that the issues were of a larger scale than had been earlier publicly known. Problem related to a product called eNodeB is included in them. The eNodeB is used for establishing a connection a mobile phone of a user and the network.
 
(Sourec:www.venturebeat.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell

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