Security experts say that 5G supply chain concerns should be taken seriously – whether it’s in the context of Huawei or not.
The controversy over Huawei’s involvement in the 5G telecom gear market ratcheted up a notch this week. U.S. officials said they have evidence that the Chinese equipment giant has had access to backdoors inside mobile carrier networks for more than 10 years.
Officials are trying to make the case that the U.S. and its allies should ban Huawei from supplying infrastructure for 5G networks going forward, due to what they say is the possibility of widespread, Beijing-backed espionage.
Huawei rejected the allegations, and other countries around the world are continuing to build networks using the vendor’s gear despite the U.S. position on the vendor. But security experts say that 5G supply-chain concerns should be taken seriously – whether it’s in the context of Huawei or not.
“A backdoor to a lawful intercept interface could yield a treasure trove of information to a malicious actor — including the current location of a target, details including when and where a call was placed, and even the ability to eavesdrop or listen into a current call,” Russ Mohr, engineer and Apple evangelist at MobileIron, told Threatpost. “A backdoor is an extremely valuable resource to a bad actor, and it is likely that it would be much more valuable as an asset to collect data than as a mounting point for an attack — although it may provide an opportunity to inject ransomware into a 5G network targeting a mobile carrier.”
Latest Allegations
The feds told the Wall Street Journal that Huawei can make use of backdoors that have been put in place by lawful-intercept legislation. Implemented around the world, these laws allow law enforcement to access call records, location data and other wireless network information during the course of a criminal investigation, under certain circumstances (in the U.S. it takes a special court approval process). The idea of lawful intercept is probably best-known from the Patriot Act, passed by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11. That expanded law enforcement’s access to electronic records in the context of suspected terror threats.
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