Huawei opens Brussels code-check office: Hey! EU've got our guide – love Huawei

Huawei stopped fighting metaphorical fires today to lift the curtain on its Brussels Cyber Security Transparency Centre in a move to position the Chinese company as a driving force for new global security standards. "We need to work together on unified standards. Based on a common set of standards, technical verification and …

[DavCrav]

"The HCSTC currently employs "around eight to 10 people""

So, nine then.

"At Huawei, we have the ABC principle for security: "Assume nothing. Believe nobody. Check everything,"

I don't know why I got reminded of 'Nothing is true; everything is permitted.'

[spold]

"At Huawei, we have the ABC principle for security: "Assume nothing. Believe nobody. Check everything," quipped Hu.

In order to check everything we need access to your systems.

[macjules]

Hey! EU've got our guide

Could be worse, you could have said, “Hey, Can(ada) we have our boss’ daughter back please?”

[Anonymous Coward]

Good step

Let's just wait and see if Cisco will do the same.

As I said before, one of the leading doubts in this affair has been that the accusations were not supported by evidence that could be examined by independent organisations. If you combine that with the fact that the kit you're supposed to replace Huawei's gear with is NOT subject to the kind of openness that is demanded of Huawei it is hard not to arrive at the conclusion that there is doth a bit too much protesting.

It is not a matter of trusting either China or the US - the default security stance should be that nothing is worth trust unless open to independent assessment. That said, I have seen fewer problems emerge from China than the US of late, which is weird.

[sprograms]

Re: Good step

Independent assessment? In the world of state-of-the-art network core systems, no firm will offer it. Yet, even if they did, neither the EU nor any EU national government can afford the sufficiently skilled manpower to accomplish such assessment on an ongoing basis.

I'm fairly stunned: Every developed western nation has a whistle-blower protection law. China, on the other hand, has a "blow the whistle and you're dead" legal regime. Do you seriously prefer your doubts about core network gear/code and its ongoing trustworthiness fall on Chinese mainland companies rather than EU (Swedish/German) and US companies? "One belt, one road, one network"? I'm reminded of my 1980's university social-science elective courses, which always seemed to have at least one rabid supporter of Maoism, against all evidence of mass own-citizen murders. Then came the western corporations, who convinced the west that Maoism was fine, so long as the shareholders got their cut. What a world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good step

Be that as it may, you are going to have to deal with an interesting problem sooner or later: thanks to Trump (well, Putin really, let's be accurate), the US is hard on its way to lose its leading position.

The annoying thing from a competitive perspective is that China can take long term investment decisions which the Western world can not. If you want to know why China is on its way to lead the world, I suggest you start investigating how it is busy creating means by which to generate energy and which laws it has put in place to tackle its environmental problems because it all hangs together - and in China you indeed don't play games with laws, even being friendly with someone high up no longer works.

Cheap energy generation equals income. Being able to sell cheap, relatively clean energy to others means high volume financial transactions and global influence, and the renminbi is already reserve currency. Bullying tactics like bombing it back to the Stone Age à la Iraq won't work either because it can hit back.

Trump's abandoning of the EPA has consequences that will take generations to fix, and the US doesn't have the means for it. China is going live with its first tests this year. I give it 5 years, max, before the Chinese lead unless the Americans ditch Trump and start working really, really hard on catching up with them. I can't see that happen, to be honest. The skills are there, but not the will to all pull in one single direction.

[Anonymous Coward]

The most interesting investigations into a router can be found on GitHub

https://github.com/elvanderb/TCP-32764

(check out the slides/PDF's)

[razorfishsl]

The issue is NOT what is in the Huawei kit.....

But WHAT will be in it once the kit is fully commissioned and the first Huawei signed software update is made.