US anti-Huawei campaign likely exaggerated, say experts

Since last year, the United States has waged a vigorous diplomatic offensive against the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, claiming that any nation deploying its gear in next-generation wireless networks is giving Beijing a conduit for espionage, or worse.

But security experts say the US government is likely exaggerating that threat. Not only is the US case short on specifics, they say, it glosses over the fact that the Chinese don’t need secret access to Huawei routers to infiltrate global networks that already have notoriously poor security.

State-sponsored hackers have shown no preference for one manufacturer’s technology over another, these experts say. Kremlin-backed hackers, for instance, adroitly exploit Internet routers and other networking equipment made by companies that are not Russian.

If the Chinese want to disrupt global networks, “they will do so regardless of the type of equipment you are using,” said Jan-Peter Kleinhans, a researcher at the Berlin think tank Neue Verantwortung Stiftung.

One of the most common US fears – that Huawei might install software ‘backdoors’ in its equipment that Chinese intelligence could use to tap into, eavesdrop on or interrupt data transmissions – strikes some experts as highly unlikely.

Priscilla Moriuchi, who retired from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2017 after running its Far East operations, does not believe the Huawei threat is overblown. But she called the odds of the company installing backdoors on behalf of Chinese intelligence “almost zero because of the chance that it would be discovered,” thus exposing Huawei’s complicity.

Moriuchi, now an analyst at the US cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said she was not aware of the NSA ever finding Huawei backdoors created for Chinese intelligence, but also cautioned that it can be extraordinarily difficult, when backdoors are found, to determine who is behind them.

European allies have been reluctant to embrace a blanket anti-Huawei ban even as US officials continue to cast the world’s No. 1 telecoms-equipment maker as little more than an untrustworthy surrogate for Beijing’s intelligence services.

The top US diplomat for cybersecurity policy, Robert Strayer, says Huawei is obliged to heed Chinese Communist Party orders by a 2017 intelligence law that “compels their citizens and their companies to participate in intelligence activities”.

Strayer provided no specifics when pressed by reporters Tuesday as to how Huawei gear might pose more of a security threat than other manufacturers’ switches, routers and wireless base stations. The diplomat spoke at Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest wireless trade show, in Barcelona, Spain.

The American rhetoric has included threats.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested in a TV interview last week that any use of Huawei equipment could jeopardise US intelligence sharing and might even be a reason to locate military bases elsewhere. The remarks may have been targeted at NATO allies, including Poland and the Czech Republic, where Huawei has made significant inroads.

A spokeswoman for the US National Security Council declined to comment or to provide any officials to address specifics. A US State Department spokesman referred The Associated Press to a press statement on Strayer’s remarks in Barcelona.

Huawei, founded in 1987 by a former military engineer, overtook Sweden’s LM Ericsson in 2017 as the lead company in the market for wireless and Internet switching gear. It says it supplies 45 of the world’s top 50 phone companies and has contracts with 30 carriers to test so-called fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless technology.

US companies are not serious competitors in this market, having pulled back over the years. Huawei’s major rivals are European — Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia.

The US has provided no evidence of China planting espionage backdoors in Huawei equipment, despite as 2012 congressional report that led the US government and top domestic wireless carriers to ban it and other Chinese manufacturers from their networks.

“The backdrop for this is essentially the rise of China as a tech power in a variety of domains” said Paul Triolo, tech lead at the Eurasia Group risk analysis consultancy. Now, he said, “there is a big campaign to paint Huawei as an irresponsible actor”.

Like the British, German officials have indicated they will reject a blanket Huawei 5G ban.

In December, the head of Germany’s cyber-risk agency, Arne Schoenbohm, said “for such serious decisions as a ban, you need evidence”.

Last week, the nation’s Interior Ministry told The Associated Press “the direct exclusion of a particular manufacturer from the 5G expansion is at the time not legally possible”.

– AP