Spooked spooks made Symantec end Huawei fling - new claim

Security biz Symantec called time on a joint venture with Chinese telecoms equipment goliath Huawei because it feared the tie-up would prevent it from gaining access to classified US intelligence on cyber-threats, according to a new report. The New York Times cited “two people briefed on the deal” as saying Symantec’s …

[Graham Wilson]

Does anybody care?

There's no doubt that Huawei is China's 'Motorola', and that it's an exciting and innovative company; but its strategic alliances with China's establishment would make it a very risky partner for any Western hi-tech company.

However, in the case of Symantec it probably doesn't matter. Any 'security' company that's been so successfully hacked and violated as Symantec means that it's probably worth stuff-all to the US government.

So why then would the US Government be interested anyway (unless it's some kind of honeypot trap)?

[Yes Me]

Risky partner??

"its strategic alliances with China's establishment would make it a very risky partner for any Western hi-tech company."

Only because of political paranoia and prejudice. The fact that a company has links to the US government and is run by an ex-military man is hardly a surprise.

Oops, did I write "US" instead of "China"?

There's no rational argument for discrimination against Huawei; they ought to sue somebody...

[Is it me?]

A cautionary tale, trotted out again

When BT got too close to Huawei it caused all sorts of problems with their accreditation status, in fact I believe it lost it for traffic over the PSTN. Even if it didn't many security focused government services refused to have BT as their carrier. I understand that BT has taken steps to rehabilitate themselves, but the damage still lingers.

With Symantec the problem would be the same, the governmental trust level would be broken, and Symantec technology is widely used.

Would you want to be the VP who had to report, we've done this bang-up deal to share technology and cut costs, but we've lost all our government business in the west. I always wonder what happened to the BT director who signed up Huawei.

[Tom 13]

Re: as Huawei is at pains to point out, had no military rank.

So he's just a straight up spy instead of spy with special forces training then, sort of like the CIA, only competent?

[Seamless]

No need to steal high tech when chocolate is on offer

"The manufacturer has sought to build closer ties with US industry, ploughing $6bn into the faltering economy last month in the form of contracts with OEMs Qualcomm, Broadcom and Avago in California."

It's well-established psychology that relatively minor offers easily identify people willing to turn over big secrets--

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/17/chocolate_password_survey/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/26/security_breach_attitudes_survey/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/password_security/

$6bn can buy a lot of chocolate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Smoke

Australia kicked these guy from working on it NBN. Seems to be a bit of a theme here...