Huawei Equipment Backdoor Found in HiSilicon Chips

Hardware researcher Vladislav Yarmak found a Huawei equipment backdoor used in video recorders and security cameras.

To be clear, this security vulnerability is said to be present in the software HiSilicon provides with its system-on-chips to customers. These components, backdoor and all, are then used by an untold number of manufacturers in network-connected recorders and cameras.

It’s not a major threat, or anything people need to fret about, it’s just another indicator of Huawei’s piss-poor approach to security.

AKA do not let Huawei build your 5G infrastructure.

Check It Out: Huawei Equipment Backdoor Found in HiSilicon Chips

5 thoughts on “Huawei Equipment Backdoor Found in HiSilicon Chips

  • Getting old – this China bashing because America simply can’t compete. HiSilicon screws up and Huawei’s to blame? Quite simply America fumbled as usual vis a vis 5G and China didn’t hence all the FUD about Huawei and China in general instead of actually innovating and competing with something over here. Pretty embarrassing all our “friends” are jumping to Huawei. No, we dull armchair scaredy cats will sit there staring at Big Pharma, Big Donor commercials from your Korean/Japanese/Chinese dumb TV screen letting your life waste by, household 90% filled with Asian hardware, clothing, even including food from Kraft, Del Monte, General Foods (all of the biggies) MOST of it from China yet Huawei is the boogey man, yeah and Saddam has WMDs and Israel wants peace and the Mac sandbox protects privacy 100%. Man what a defective race we are. In my generation we were lucky to have the Beatles and at first Apple before they became Pepsi and now Elon Musk. Beatles are still relevant today and Elon is today and the future (bought TSLA at $23) and Apple is irrelevant now – just a cash machine with no conscience let alone hipness anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • I remember an article few years back describing an agency unpacking new Netgear and Linksys home wifi routers, updating the firmware, packing them and letting them to be distributed to customers.

  • Is the Huawei backdoor more alarming than the ones found in hardware by (at least) Intel and Cisco?

    Apart from that, what to think of the governments (plural!) that object to end-to-end encryption, encrypted cloud storage and that want the power to have devices unlocked?

    On the other hand, what in the world isn’t (more or less) voluntarily shared with the Facebook companies (and others) – all American companies? (And I’m Dutch…)

  • I’ve always thought the threat of Huawei being used by the Chinese government for spying to be vastly overblown. Far more concern is their poor quality. If the PRC DID want to do something, I’d expect them to make Huawei push out a firmware update that caused their routers and other equipment to fail on a particular date. It would be very disruptive and with Huawei’s history, China would have a solid level of deniability.

    1. “I’d expect them to make Huawei push out a firmware update that caused their routers and other equipment to fail on a particular date.”

      Good point They could do both back door and a timed poison pill..

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