Exchanges ordered to pull Chinese smartphones over security risks

a reply to: Cygnis

Hard drives have always been suspect since the mid 90's as far as I was aware. At least those of us who worked with systems on a daily basis. The idea of buying a 100gb drive and only being able to use 86gb due to "reserved" and such areas was always highly suspicious and the lame excuse of 'caching and error correcting clusters' never seemed to satisfy.

I thought most of it was (intentional) confusion between MiB(1000) and MB(1024)?
What would be the purpose? Collecting random data? How does it get back to the ones who intend to use it? Via dial-up? From trash? Please elaborate what you mean.

At least those of us who worked with systems on a daily basis.

Never heard of any conspiracy. Often you would get very close to the actual size by doing the 1000/1024 conversion, the rest would be fragmentation, buffer or reserve for error correction in case there is physical damage like unreadable and unwritable segments on the plate(s).

originally posted by: Cygnis

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — The three military exchange services pulled all smartphones made by Chinese electronics manufacturers Huawei and ZTE from stores around the world and banned their sale because of the security risks the devices pose, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The Defense Department’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness issued a ban of “all Huawei and ZTE cellphones, personal mobile internet modems and related products from locations worldwide,” DOD spokesman Maj. Dave Eastburn said an email to Stars and Stripes.

Link to source (Stars and Stripes)

So, it is understood by many here that your being spied on through your phone any given moment.

But this takes it to a new level, as who knows what is programmed into these phones or any phones.

I think it prudent we limit what is captured and exposed to foreign governments.

Just look at the ties of ZTE and the Brazilian contract company making the phones. Also people involved in ZTE CN that also have links to the Chinese government.

Disguising data sniffing behind other actions and data transfers. Nothing a normal joe could find watching data rates etc. this is why many ZTE seem slower than they already are and overheat.

Now guess what China does with everything found be it military secrets or trade..

a reply to: Johnathanandheather

Interesting.

I've never gotten my hands on one of those phones to check it out.

Would be kind'a fun to dig through it, and see if one could trace things.

a reply to: ntech

American designed and managed.

a reply to: nOraKat

Produced in Taiwan and Korea.

a reply to: Cygnis

You can relative simple. Boot up the phone with no sim-card so there is no dataconnection possible (disable it via software could be circumvented).

Use a wlan card as a gateway to your router and run wireshark. Enable wlan. See the packets flooding in/out...

I have a Huawei phone, its not a bad phone biggest bonus is an insanely long battery life.
I am not overly concerned about them stealing my information, since my information has already been stolen a few times by the Chinese from a variety of hacks that the Fed was to lazy/incompetent to defend against.

Course if I land a job with the Fed or at a company that would be at risk taking the phone into the place of business I would get a new phone.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Yep, I'm with you and have almost stopped caring about eavesdropping. All android phones are based around Google which is routinely spied on by the Five Eyes led by NSA. The Americans also banned Kaspersky which I also use. So we've got a high chance of being 'spied' on by the Chinese (via Huawei), the Five Eyes and the Russians just by being on a mobile phone or online.

Whilst I personally and morally object to all the spying, it's gone way past the point of ever stopping so we'll just have to suck it up. It's part of the modern world that leaders, businesses and the State apparatus have more rights to our metadata than we do. Some asshole in the FBI or NSA said privacy is a privilege and not a right. Just off that ignorance alone it's clear the Chinese are no better or worse than America for intrusions.

originally posted by: Rosinitiate
So this site is Social Media

No this is NOT social Media. This is a message board.