Huawei sponsors All White game
UPDATE Oct 26: There's no free Coldplay gigs for NZ, but Huawei is also on the front on this side of the Tasman, too.
This afternoon, the Chinese telecommunications company said it would sponsor a match between the All Whites and China to "mark 40 years of diplomatic relations between New Zealand and China."
The match will be held in Shanghai on November 14.
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Huawei Aussie PR assault continues with free Coldplay gigs
UPDATE Oct 25: Huawei's PR assault on Australia continued today as the Chinese telecommunications company announced two free Cold Play concerts.
One will be at a so-far-secret "intimate venue" early in the day on November 15 (tickets are being dished out via the company's Facebook page, the charmingly-named Huawei Device Australia).
Later the same day, Coldplay will play a second concert at another venue, also intimate. The second concert will be simulcast by a local radio station, and webcast through Huawei's Facebook page.
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In Australia, Huawei pushes back with a cunning plan
Oct 24: Huawei, blocked from Australia's $A37 billion National Broadband Network (NBN), has hit back with a cunning plan.
Stories in the AFR and other Aussie media confidently predict Huawei Australia chairman John Lord will call for the creation of a cyber security evaluation centre.
Huawei wants the government to test its gear (with full access to its source code), and that of any company that wants to participate in a "critical infrastructure" project.
Nitpickers will wonder how a speech by Mr Lord - to be delivered to the National Press Club in Canberra this afternoon - has been so widely leaked.
And in practical terms, a cyber security evaluation centre would prove little.
As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, all the major telecommunications infrastructure makers leave back doors and vulnerabilities - the question, unknowable from technical testing, is whether the security gaps are accidental or on purpose, and whether they will be exploited.
Still, politically it's a clever play.
And, Lord knows - so to speak - life at Huawei Australia is all about politics and PR (the chairman is a retired Admiral, sending a subtle message about security).
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Comments and questions7
The New Zealand government would fall for this
The UK government has all but cleared Huawei, the US enquiry has found nothing. It might be that there is nothing to talk about.
Boycott Coldplay
Full access to source code... is not all that it seems, far less in fact.
Propriety code will never be full access because you do not have control over the development process. This is most important because the developers (the coders) will develop what they are told to develop. They will code what they are told to code. Foreign nationals will code what they are told to code, in a foreign country.
Why have full access to source code. When you must have a dedicated IT team which must decipher the code, and every time it is altered they must decipher the code from scratch. Every update. It could be a small update, it could be a huge update, it could be on Christmas eve, it doesn't matter.
It could be the threat of the "worlds worse virus" so we quickly update all of our servers to this new software, then all of a sudden we loose all civil communication. Or worse we lose all military communication. This is not security. It is the anti-thesis of security.
Security is to develop the software in house, where it is out in the open from the word go. Open source software is the best example of security that exists in the IT world. Open source is the bleeding edge of IT security simply because it is open. It is not just open, but it is an open standard which is used and developed worldwide, by IT professionals worldwide.
People who use the standard, develop the standard, take for example SSH private key encryption, unbreakable without social engineering.
This other (proprietary) company could make so many updates that the local team could not keep up with the development. This is how bugs slip through. This turns into privacy breaches and embarrassment for the government and ministers at best, it could be a National Security Breach at worst..
You could have a full time IT team (searching through code) which would be better spend developing it's own code from scratch. You will not save any money deciphering foreign code, which would in fact take longer.
The answer is, we buy the hardware, and we have an IT team in house that is designing the software from scratch, or using open source. They are in full control of the development process. This team would be not privately owned and not charging 100 million dollars a year. But made up of 20-30 qualified IT professionals and graduates (50-100k a year) who have been vetted by internal affairs, with a total salary budget of say 2,500,000 a year.
No high paid CEO here. But maybe a team manager on a good salary, 100k or so.
New Zealand and Australia have both the technological and economic capability to develop their own code for internet infrastructure hardware devices, and their own hardware if need be. We have the professionals and businesses that can do this "in country".
I would like to see both New Zealand and Australian governments taking a more responsible approach to information security. NZ/AU could develop in unison internet hardware which is both secure and functional with little cost.
New Zealand must secure it's international transmissions.
Yawn. Big beat up by US so that its companies continue to charge excessively.
Only idiots will believe the nonsense out of the US government.
Oh, US turned down a bid by the Chinese to buy 4 wind farms because of the potential threat to national security! Hohoho!
No PR measures for NZ then? Isnt it nice being the poor country bumpkin to a country like Aussie
Boycott the All Whites