"This new architecture provides a way to circumvent traditional security controls by exploiting equipment in the edge of the network – exploitation which may affect overall network integrity and availability, as well as the confidentiality of customer data."
Hey Australian Government. You know what also protects confidentiality of customer data? Encryption.
This is kinda funny and hypocritical when you devote a few brain cells to this.
Every country is gathering data on everyone. If you think they are respecting your privacy, you’re naive.
The US has been doing it for years. Secretly. EU and I bet you Australia too.
And even China, yes. But hey, at least China is honest about what they’re doing. Gotta respect that at least.
Point is, it’s just a show.
This destroys the logic of free trade, competition that countries and a plethora of global organizations like IMF, WB promote and enforced aggressively over the last 40 years especially when looking for markets in other countries.
But if its only applicable to a favoured set and suddenly has all sorts of qualifiers when it comes to your own markets then the whole thing collapses. And everyone can see its politics with a fig leaf of process designed for one way benefit and as a system cannot deliver mutual benefits.
Maybe PRISM is also caused by Huawei and ZTE. There is nothing about politics.
Cyber actors is one I've not heard before.
Sounds like a good idea, what are the downsides if any?
I wish they'd bad this equipment not because it's Chinese, but simply because it's shit. Seriously, pretty much all mobile network equipment (including EU-based Ericsson) has critical vulnerabilities. I wouldn't worry about Chinese backdoors when anyone can get privileged access to the core network.
Tie my kangaroo down sport, that's good news. Now we just need the sleepy EU to wake up so we get their spyware removed from our Mobile Operators infrastructure here!
Many people seem to dislike the anti-china move. However, let's not forget that china has put over 1 million Muslims in literal concentration or reeducation camps. That's wrong. China needs to stop, and if not buying their cell gear helps, we should consider it too.
I don't understand the concern. Huawei isn't providing the 5G network, just the phones that latch on to it. It would presumably be Telstra (the primary Australian telecommunications provider) that would provide the network itself.
How is providing a 5G compatible phone any more a security risk than providing a 4G one?
Edit: I should have read this more thoroughly since it's not just about phone, but rather that "Australia has blocked Huawei and ZTE from providing equipment for its 5G network". Key word: equipment, which I'm guessing spans to the installation of infrastructure in Australia.
The west is slowly starting to realize something that China has realized for years; economic policy is not a question of economics but of geopolitical strategy. Free markets are nice in theory (and often in practice), but once you let in bad actors with the clout of a nation state, all the usual assumption behind free markets no longer apply. It's pretty disappointing that, based on what we now know, western economists aided China in gutting western industry under the guise of "China is just subsidizing the west, we'd be stupid not to take advantage." Even worse, we had already rejected that argument when applied to companies like Walmart, but for some reason we thought it would apply to whole national economies.