Trouble for Huawei phones

[ursaminortaur]

Anyone thinking of buying a Huawei phone might be interested to know that Google is blocking Huawei's access to Android updates, Gmail and Google Play store.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/19/google-huawei-trump-blacklist-report

Google has suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware and software products except those covered by open source licenses, a source has told Reuters.

The news is a blow to the Chinese technology company that the US government has sought to blacklist around the world.

Huawei Technologies will immediately lose access to updates for the Android operating system while the next version of its smartphones outside China will lose access to popular applications and services including the Google Play store and the Gmail app.

[UncleEbenezer]

And the world learns a lesson about relying on anything controlled by the US. Anyone know how much of the UK's armed forces' technology might stop working if we defy Trump? Or the NHS's? Or government's?

Huawei consumer devices (including phones) have of course nothing to do with the networking gear that Trump&Pompeo have hitherto been attacking.

[BobbyD]

Huawei consumer devices (including phones) have of course nothing to do with the networking gear that Trump&Pompeo have hitherto been attacking.

Trumps been attacking China. Networking gear has got no more to do with his war than mobile phones.

[neversay]

No doubt anti-US conspiracy theorists will be all over it, but it's a credible threat and a necessary response.

[Laughton]

Hmmm - does this have any effect on Huawei routers (that's how I get my 4G signal because BT aren't able to supply broadband to where I live)?

Anyone know?

I'm probably worrying unnecessarily as I don't think the router's software updates and I'm not sure that EE knows what make/model of router I'm using.

[UncleEbenezer]

No doubt anti-US conspiracy theorists will be all over it, but it's a credible threat and a necessary response.

What's a credible threat to anyone in the UK?

(other than Trump - and even he hasn't tried to suggest their phones or tablets are a threat to anyone)

Hint: The UK doesn't have any major players in the industries where Huawei is competing. So any threat to us is limited to collateral damage as Trump throws his toys out of the pram.

[neversay]

No doubt anti-US conspiracy theorists will be all over it, but it's a credible threat and a necessary response.

What's a credible threat to anyone in the UK?

(other than Trump - and even he hasn't tried to suggest their phones or tablets are a threat to anyone)

Hint: The UK doesn't have any major players in the industries where Huawei is competing. So any threat to us is limited to collateral damage as Trump throws his toys out of the pram.

Exploits that give root access to millions of mobile devices, accounts, servers and communications. People will not consider it a 'threat to anyone' until the day that the results of the exploits are made apparent - by which time it's too late.

[UncleEbenezer]

No doubt anti-US conspiracy theorists will be all over it, but it's a credible threat and a necessary response.

What's a credible threat to anyone in the UK?

(other than Trump - and even he hasn't tried to suggest their phones or tablets are a threat to anyone)

Hint: The UK doesn't have any major players in the industries where Huawei is competing. So any threat to us is limited to collateral damage as Trump throws his toys out of the pram.

Exploits that give root access to millions of mobile devices, accounts, servers and communications. People will not consider it a 'threat to anyone' until the day that the results of the exploits are made apparent - by which time it's too late.

Oh, right, the little green men. You are arguing on the level of worrying about catching cold because I sneezed while posting here. And waving your arms in a sufficiently vague way that there's nothing to answer. That's not argument, it's religion. Or crossing the road so as not to pass near the big black fella.

We know exploits happen, some of them extremely serious (read a week's worth of articles at www.theregister.co.uk for a flavour of them - some big stories this past week). Those of us who have spent years working in the field and given presentations at professional conferences can also smell pure bullshit that has no basis in reality.

[Slarti]

From what I've been reading, our press has done a bad job of reporting this.

Existing kit should be able to carry on as normal, as should stuff in the pipeline.

Any new models will almost certainly not be Android. It has been suggested that they will be a Huawei Linux based operating system and that Huawei will start their own app store, but that remains to be seen.

So, owners of current Huawei kit, don't panic!

Slarti

[neversay]

What's a credible threat to anyone in the UK?

(other than Trump - and even he hasn't tried to suggest their phones or tablets are a threat to anyone)

Hint: The UK doesn't have any major players in the industries where Huawei is competing. So any threat to us is limited to collateral damage as Trump throws his toys out of the pram.

Exploits that give root access to millions of mobile devices, accounts, servers and communications. People will not consider it a 'threat to anyone' until the day that the results of the exploits are made apparent - by which time it's too late.

Oh, right, the little green men. You are arguing on the level of worrying about catching cold because I sneezed while posting here. And waving your arms in a sufficiently vague way that there's nothing to answer. That's not argument, it's religion. Or crossing the road so as not to pass near the big black fella.

We know exploits happen, some of them extremely serious (read a week's worth of articles at http://www.theregister.co.uk for a flavour of them - some big stories this past week). Those of us who have spent years working in the field and given presentations at professional conferences can also smell pure bullshit that has no basis in reality.

I work in the area. You don't have to believe me.

[stewamax]

Android itself is not the big issue – there is the almost-current open-source Android from which Huawei can create a ‘fork’ (offspring version) and they could even make this fork open-source (which might just worry Google a bit…).
Android itself doesn’t change a lot between versions, either in ‘look and feel’ or in APIs (the formats and protocols used by apps to talk to Android). Three years or so ago they forcibly nudged developers to use Google Studio rather than Eclipse or any other development environment, but that was no big deal.

The real threat to Huawei is lack of access to Google Play Store. Users don’t plump for Android or IOS (iPhone/iPad) phones because of Android or IOS but because of the apps available. It was lack of industry support for Windows Phone that killed it (it officially dies at the end of this year) – if no-one writes apps for your phone no-one will buy it. However, apart from Apple, Huawei is the only mobile and network supplier with the competence and size to challenge Google. They also (like Apple) design their own phones but (unlike Apple) also manufacture them.

[Julian]

Exploits that give root access to millions of mobile devices, accounts, servers and communications. People will not consider it a 'threat to anyone' until the day that the results of the exploits are made apparent - by which time it's too late.

Oh, right, the little green men. You are arguing on the level of worrying about catching cold because I sneezed while posting here. And waving your arms in a sufficiently vague way that there's nothing to answer. That's not argument, it's religion. Or crossing the road so as not to pass near the big black fella.

We know exploits happen, some of them extremely serious (read a week's worth of articles at http://www.theregister.co.uk for a flavour of them - some big stories this past week). Those of us who have spent years working in the field and given presentations at professional conferences can also smell pure bullshit that has no basis in reality.

I work in the area. You don't have to believe me.

I agree that the threats are real and one doesn't need to look too far from home to see an example. How far one needs to look depends on how far one lives from Cheltenham. The GCHQ "Smurfs" project is an example of previous exploits. Such exploits actually potentially date back to before smart phones were prevalent, e.g. a nasty bug in the SMS protocols (not the bands actually used to send user messages but one of the side channels) that due to flaws in the authentication protocols allowed unauthorised actors to flash any update down onto a phone potentially containing something like a Smurf. I'd be quite surprised if GCHQ wasn't making use of that (now closed) exploit at the time.

How does one protect against it though? Only allow good upstanding British phones built by good upstanding British companies and running nothing but good upstanding British software? Obviously not. (And yes, I'm being slightly sarcastic in my wording.) The Huawei stuff seems more related to Trump's escalating trade war with China to me rather than being an effective way of preventing such exploits.

I suspect that GCHQ does do quite a lot of network monitoring to try and identify suspicious phone-home traffic potentially to malevolent parties. I wonder how much more difficult that has become since Snowden blew the mass surveillance data collection happening at the UK gateway sites (codename Tempora). Wikipedia talks about Tempora in the present tense (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora) so presumably(*) it is still active. That data would be a pretty obvious place to mine for markers of suspicious activity.

- Julian

(*) and in my personal view hopefully still active but I realise that others violently disagree with me there

[Redmires]

It all seems a bit "after the horse has bolted" to me. Huawei equipment has been in the core BT 21st Century network for the last dozen or so years at least. I often used to work on Huawei equipment in a former life as a data engineer in comms rooms, in both BT exchanges and private company premises.

The Huawei stuff seems more related to Trump's escalating trade war with China to me....

Exactly. And don't forget the US election year is in 2020 and Trump is starting fights with everyone with that in mind.

[Infrasonic]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chin ... SKCN1SR14A

Shares in rare earth-related companies in China soared on Tuesday, a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited a rare earth firm in southern China, sparking speculation the sector could be the next front in the Sino-U.S. trade war.

[Slarti]

Situation update, all is as before, for 90 days
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/05 ... 558436863/


Slarti

[UncleEbenezer]

I actually thought about getting a Wah-Whey phone. Not any more. And i can't think of any reason why you would get one now.

The damage had been done.

The biggest damage will be to Google.

Because an ecosystem like Android needs all participants to trust that they'll be treated fairly. That trust has just been blown. That will provide the impetus for one or more of the alternatives that's somewhere-near-ready to go mainstream. Hopefully it'll learn the lesson of this: make it an international effort with nodes in many countries, so no future rogue government can bugger it up.

Android reportedly has something like 90% market share today. Trump has just ensured the situation will be very different in five years.

Perhaps Google's best hope now would be to hand Android to a multinational open source foundation. Sufficient Android to power a consumer device without any need for a business relationship with a company that might be at risk of government nonsense. If indeed they can do that now without falling foul of Trump's sanctions.

[ursaminortaur]

I actually thought about getting a Wah-Whey phone. Not any more. And i can't think of any reason why you would get one now.

The damage had been done.

The biggest damage will be to Google.

Because an ecosystem like Android needs all participants to trust that they'll be treated fairly. That trust has just been blown. That will provide the impetus for one or more of the alternatives that's somewhere-near-ready to go mainstream. Hopefully it'll learn the lesson of this: make it an international effort with nodes in many countries, so no future rogue government can bugger it up.

Android reportedly has something like 90% market share today. Trump has just ensured the situation will be very different in five years.

Perhaps Google's best hope now would be to hand Android to a multinational open source foundation. Sufficient Android to power a consumer device without any need for a business relationship with a company that might be at risk of government nonsense. If indeed they can do that now without falling foul of Trump's sanctions.

Android is already open source but the main development isn't community driven instead being driven by Google. Also although the OS is open source much of the application environment isn't.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/android-really-open-source-matter/

Android is based on the Linux kernel, and like that complex piece of code, most parts are open source with a few binary blobs included to make things work with certain hardware. The core Android platform, known as the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), is available for anyone to do with what they wish.
HTC, Huawei, LG, Samsung, Sony, Xiaomi, and many other manufacturers have all done precisely this on phones and tablets. They’re hardly alone.
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Android is open source, but most of the software we run on top of the platform isn’t. This is true whether you get a Nexus device or something from Samsung. Unlike in the early days of the Android, the Google Now Launcher and most of Google’s apps have become closed source.

The same is true of the code that ships on Samsung, HTC, LG, and other manufacturers’ custom adaptations. Most of the apps you get on Google Play, regardless of if they’re free to download, also aren’t open source. Since this software forms the bulk of what we see and use, the situation makes Android ultimately feel like a closed source platform.
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2. Android’s Core Development Isn’t Community Driven

For the most part, Google develops Android. Once or twice a year, the company dumps a bunch of new code over a metaphorical wall that tinkerers and hardware makers rush (or, you know, take their time) to put in their stuff.
Google then releases maintenance and security updates every month or so while it prepares for the next big release.
Many other well-known open source projects typically seek more involvement from the broader community. Red Hat may fund a good portion of the work that goes into GNOME, but developers from all over the world contribute code.
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By comparison, Android comes off as entirely a Google product.

[Infrasonic]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48363772

UK-based chip designer ARM has told staff it must suspend business with Huawei, according to internal documents obtained by the BBC.

An in depth analysis of the hardware and software issue here...https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/05 ... -problems/

[UncleEbenezer]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48363772

UK-based chip designer ARM has told staff it must suspend business with Huawei, according to internal documents obtained by the BBC.

An in depth analysis of the hardware and software issue here...https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/05 ... -problems/

Today I'm glad I no longer own ARM shares (since the softbank takeover). My most successful ever investment - my twenty-bagger - just became a short candidate. 'Cos all I said about the Android ecosystem also applies to ARM, and I suspect there's even more at stake.

Though having said that, Softbank has already taken measures to diversify their ecosystem, which may well mitigate the impact. I believe a part of what was ARM is Chinese-owned: I wonder what might happen there if the Chinese had a Trump?