UK Defence Committee chair muses treating TikTok like Huawei: So eyeball its code then ban it from the country?

The chairman of UK Parliament's Defence Committee has suggested making popular app TikTok subject to Huawei-style code reviews by GCHQ, if its reported move to a new London HQ comes true. Tobias Ellwood, Conservative MP for Bournemouth East, made the suggestion on Twitter after The Sun newspaper broke the news this morning …

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we have them take a look through Cisco's codebase first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ciscrud

You'd have to give reviewers PTSD treatment for having to review all the unholy holes.

[Sanctimonious Prick]

Re: Ciscrud

@Hildy3

"review all the unholy holes."

I read "review all the nudity holes."

Whatever, i'm ... obviously just having one of those days!!

[NonSSL-Login]

Even amateurs are finding hard coded credentials...I mean the more plausible deniability version of debug keys that engineers forgot to remove....in Cisco kit.

No need for the experts to look when theres on average 5 backdoors/pre-uth exec/RCE found every month anyway :P

Remember kids, its ok for google software to send everything to the mothership about you for Uncle Sam and the NSA but China is bad mmkay, their software might do something....

[Sanctimonious Prick]

Yeah, yeah. Go for it. Just remember though, there is certain code in Cisco products that cannot be reviewed for security reasons.

[Doctor Syntax]

A government MP who's heard of HCSEC! Maybe he should tell his colleagues because he seems to be in a minority of one.

[amanfromMars 1]

Is a Useful Idiot, an Oxymoron?

Quite why anyone would listen to paranoia and give any credence to Ellwood and Ellwood's suggestion of "GCHQ cyber scrutiny" given the farce of the shenanigans that appear to have rendered GCHQ's competence in that realm effectively destroyed by a counter-intelligence operation against Huawei, is probably extremely revealing to the many who would find such things more than just helpful.

[Pete 2]

a stranger approaches ...

> controversy over its Chinese ownership for broadly similar reasons to American dislike of Huawei

Hello TikTok

Errrr, hello Mr Trump

Nice little business you've got here

Why thank you

Yes ... it would be a shame if something happened to it

Happened? Like what

Well, for example if we I decided to ban it

Why would you do that?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe we would decide it was a security risk - what with it not being american [ stands up, salutes, sits down again ]

But it isn't.

Well, we don't know that - what with it not being american [ stands up, salutes, sits down again ]

What can we do to assure you it's OK?

Hmmm, how about you sell it to me us. We'll give you a fair price what with it not being american [ stands up, salutes, sits down again ]

.... how about $1? Seems fair

That's not very much.

It's much more than it will be worth when we ban it. What with it not being american [ stands up, salutes, sits down again ]

Oh!

[Klimt's Beast Would]

bEllwood again?

So he's howls like a warewolf even when there isn't a full moon?*

* 100% of vets recommend that he changes his diet to scooby snacks, twice a day. 100% of cats disagree.