Humor

FBI investigation determined Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear comms

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/23/politics/fbi-investigation-huawei-china-defense-department-communications-nuclear/index.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32200371

Highlight comment: "Presumably, antenna resonance, array phase (directionality) and radio spectrum are all controllable with software now. Any or all of these could be modified remotely and changed back to civilian cell parameters again in a matter of seconds. Additionally the firmware, and hence general capabilities, can be remotely updated.

Hence, one can no longer look at a device like a modern radio cell and say "this is designed to work in such a way". If you impounded it, took it to a lab, what you'd see on the bench may have no relation to how it operated a few days ago. Given also that traffic to and from the device may be encrypted all the way back to Beijing, the operation of the devices cannot be attested even in principle.

This is a serious general problem in modern security - one of unfalsifiability and plasticity of form and function. It applies as much to Windows and Apple computers as to Huawei.

Unless we quickly reverse the trend toward vendor-trust models that give over total control to unverifiable remote entities we're all going to be seriously screwed soon."

--nonrandomstring