A bug by any other name

Try as it might, Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies just can’t shake perceptions that its equipment may serve as a virtual Trojan horse for Chinese electronic intelligence gathering.

For the last two years, Huawei’s defining challenge in the United States has not been tough competition from worldwide giants such as Cisco Systems but rather roadblocks set up by US lawmakers, suspicious of the company’s alleged connections to the People’s Liberation Army. Doubts linger despite no definitive public evidence that Huawei could be complicit in hacking.

In fact, the biggest threat from Huawei is likely not that the company has malicious intent to aid in hacking. Instead, as one security researcher has demonstrated, foreign companies should fear the potential security holes created by the sloppily coded software that powers Huawei’s gear. Felix Lindner, head of German security firm Recurity Labs, has become a vocal critic of Huawei’s security practices. During 2012 he toured the hacker conference circuit – DEFCON in Las Vegas then Hack in the Box in Kuala Lumpur.