To prevent damage to the government’s information security, the Industrial Technology Research Institute and the Institute for Information Industry have one after the other forbidden the use of mobile phones made by China’s Huawei Technologies to connect with their intranets, and now the Executive Yuan has announced that it would publish a blacklist of products by Chinese brands at the end of next month — earlier than planned.
Some people interpret these events as having to do with cross-strait relations, which often cause China-related information technology (IT) and software to be put under a magnifying glass. These people think that political motives might be the main reason for these bans, rather than questions of security.
However, things are not so simple. As far back as 2015, experts detected a security vulnerability in one of Huawei’s flagship cellphones.
Their test report said that while the Android operating system protects users’ security by displaying a warning about third-party software, the vulnerability in Huawei’s phone allowed apps to be downloaded from third-party sources without showing any security warning.
Some academics believe that, from a technical point of view, this is not an ordinary vulnerability and should not be classified as such, but rather be seen as a “trapdoor.” Intentionally planted backdoors such as this could help outside actors collect and steal end users’ data without their knowledge and send it to a server that might be in China.
More worrying still, reports published by Western research institutions have said that Chinese laws allow government authorities to require Chinese companies to collect information about their users, while companies are not allowed to refuse such a request or conceal the requested information.
Companies in Western countries are mainly concerned with making a profit, so it is rare for them to voluntarily encroach upon or steal consumers’ confidential information. However, Chinese companies have different priorities — especially companies that are specially fostered by the state and go on to expand overseas with government support.
Being controlled behind the scenes by the Chinese Communist Party, such companies might plant trapdoors or leave vulnerabilities in their hardware and software that allow their information and communications products to function as spying tools for the Chinese authorities.
Business secrets are important, but state secrets are more important. It is essential to maintain strict controls and regulation, because without them the door to state secrets will be left wide open.
Wei Shih-chang works in the information industry.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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