The Irony: The US and Germany Spies deliberately weakened crypto-security during the Cold War, and Huawei is accused today without proof shown of the same, and the US wants the same backdoors

Don't get me wrong I don't condone secret backdoors by any country (whether China, US, Germany or others) as you either have security or you don't - there is no controlled measure of security. We also must not be naive about spying - all countries spy on all countries (the US was caught out recently spying on their German allies). Obviously if you were an Ethiopian you'd want to condone this where it used against "foreign powers", but no it's often used against internally too by abusers of power (remember you don't have all the legal processes with secret backdoors and everything becomes terrorism or child pornography). And of course politics also gets into the mix.

So let no country cast stones at others from their glass houses...

I still wonder if the push to get "own technology" into Europe and other countries is not just a way of ensuring your own backdoors (intentional) / vulnerabilities (non-intentional) are in place for you to leverage instead of the other country. So if Ethiopia was about to replace its government routers say, and must decide between Cisco and Huawei, there may be more at stake than the price (substitute Ethiopia with any other country name). Cloud will be even better as the actual data sits in it, and is not just passing through.

So yes maybe properly inspected open source which is self-compiled may have to be the way to go. After-all the US NSA uses a self-spun secure version of Linux for itself (trust no-one).

See Cold War revelation at #^https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/11/crypto_ag_backdoored_german_swiss_news_allegs/ and the current backdoor tensions (the modern Cold War?) at #^https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/12/us_huawei_backdoor/.

#technology #security #crypto

#^Crypto AG backdooring rumours were true, say German and Swiss news orgs after explosive docs leaked