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None of the provided links as much as mentions Huawei or provides anything but uncertainty that there were any bugging devices found at the Nortel offices.



You would have to be familiar with the technical details of DWDM platform system architecture, photonics, etc in order to grok a full explanation. The Huawei product released was identical. It was identical down to the ASICs on the individual linecards and other things that would have been impossible to reverse engineer in a "Clean room" environment. I know I'm not providing a citation here, but among the community of ISPs and backbone carriers that actually have a need for this sort of equipment, it's a known fact as solidly as "water is wet".

https://www.afr.com/technology/web/security/how-chinese-hack...

https://business.financialpost.com/technology/nortel-hacked-...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...


If it was patented, why didn't the company sue Huawei and ban import of the product?


Why is this downvoted? Industrial spying is punished in the west.


Political forces you don't fully understand prevented it.

A WTO case would have been easier.


> Political forces you don't fully understand

This is exactly as useful and trustworthy as saying "A wizard did it".


Can confirm this from another source. Old guy I met waiting for a flight in Vegas; he was on his way back from CES. Had run his own ISP a while back for a special purpose. Talked about this, Huawei's refusal to remove a back-door ("remote assistance and diagnosis feature" or some such malarkey), etc. They're not nice guys.


But Huawei is not different from other vendors here. For example: Windows has telemetry that cannot be disabled and sends data into American data centers, Apple has control over its phones around the world, can remotely block them and know their location, and who knows what else, Google tries to convince users from around the world to store all their data in an American cloud (not their own cloud, or a cloud in their country they can trust, but the cloud in US), and almost every Intel CPU has an additional CPU (ME engine) that has full control over the system, with encrypted firmware, and is not documented.

Yet I don't see any accusations against Microsoft, Apple, Android or Intel.


Maybe because I trust those organizations (and even the American government) more the China as much as I hate to admit it.

I don’t think you can really compare the companies.


I on the other hand, don't think China has the extrajudicial reach of the U.S. (yet?) & as an EU citizen I don't trust either the U.S., nor China, but I think my own government would not bow down to Chinese pressure, (i.e. to hand over info about me etc.), as they regularly do to American one, certainly not as easily.

I don't think Kim Dotcom would have a military style raid on his house in NZ done on behalf of the Chinese government.


I think he would. Look how the EU/NZ is not helping Taiwan - in order to not offend China. It is a shame.


> I don't think Kim Dotcom would have a military style raid on his house in NZ done on behalf of the Chinese government.

perhaps not, but in Thailand, yes.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/03/activist-li-xi...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/hong-kong-acti...


Plenty of us would rather trust China than the US, mostly because China has less influence in our countries than the US does.


I really don't get this POV. If it was just about a random Chinese company, sure, whatever, but Huawei though is 99% likely passing to the Chinese state, which is a geo-political entity that has more than a passing resemblance to some Hitler/Mao/Stalin hybrid that is fairly terrifying.

It is rapidly scaling its military technology and reach, threatening neighbors over competing claims in the South China Sea, re-creating its own version of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere via the Belt and Road initiative and China 2025, interning its own citizens by the millions into re-education camps, forcing spying by its own citizens overseas by threatening family members, introducing a 'social credit' system to force not only self-censorship, but active promotion of its policies by its citizenry in order to not lose 'privileges' like taking the train.

I understand that the Trumpian version of the US is annoying in many ways, but the idea that we let China and Chinese companies dominated by it's government (they literally have to pay Party minders to keep them in line) have unconstrained access to its geopolitical foes infrastructure beggars belief.


The US have been the instigator in quite a number of wars of aggression, with devastating consequences for the countries targeted and the people living in them. They constantly threaten to start new attacks. Meanwhile China builds roads and bridges and trains and cheap electronics. Is it really that hard to see why one is preferred over the other?


Noting that you didn't actually rebut any point I made...


You “really don’t get this POV”, and ephemeralism expanded on the POV you don’t get. Not to mention quite a few points of yours are heavily pushed narratives by the Western media based on thin or exaggerated evidence, when Western media are clearly not neutral on Chinese matter. Funny how you mentioned China “threatening” neighbors, and ephemeralism pointed out that the U.S. has started numerous wars (and bankrolled more), with boots on the ground.


Because those companies have never released stolen material from offices they bugged.

Microsoft's telemetry data is like sending the teacher a note that you viewed the material. Huawei hides a camera in your home steals your homework and beats you out of that college placement with your own material.


Why doesn't Microsoft allow to disable it then? It is not like I asked for a teacher.


Because that's the product they are selling you decided to use it over an os that comes with the source code like Linux.

Microsoft hasn't added telemetry to linux through a backdoor.


And neither did Huawei.


There were some stories where Huawei's source code included the Nortel copyright at the top. Just 100% blatant.


Not doubting you but it would be great to link to one/several of those stories.

A quick google search turns up a CBC article from 2012 where a former Nortel exec alleges Huawei hacking, and also, amusingly, this HN story.


It's fair to say that, in 2019, Huawei scale money can buy you online reputation...including removal of any documented instances that might hurt its image. After all, Google was their partner for a good amount of time.


MSFT was a giant but was not able to hide the Halloween documents, I don't see why Huawei would succeed in that.


You're talking about a company whose majority ownership is some sort of murky "employee coop without voting rights."

The modern Chinese legal system isn't nearly as predicable as other jurisdictions.


well, but the chinese legal system is not the issue here, we're talking about silencing media reporting on a scandal of sorts, outside of china.


All external reporting begins with a seed, and that seed plays very different in a closed society without free speech protection.


can i see the code?




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