Belgacom hacks and spying show the needs to strongly improve telecom security

October 25, 2013 | Posted in News | By

“Several of us around the table had been subject to surveillance,” he told reporters.”The least we can expect is the countries and security services involve change their practices.”

“According to De Standaard, […] the spying was carried out by the U.S. National Security Agency and involved tracking international telephone calls for two years. It was focused on BICS, the Belgacom unit which provides wholesale telecom infrastructure services–in particular in Africa and the Middle East.”

Belgacom claims it was spied on by NSA.

Belgium latest to seek answers on spying allegations.

 

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France in the NSA’s crosshair : phone networks under surveillance

October 21, 2013 | Posted in News | By

Le Monde article on NSA spying on France telecom networks based on Snowden leaks.

“According to the documents retrieved from the NSA database […] telephone communications of French citizens are intercepted on a massive scale.”

“The techniques used for these interceptions appear under the codenames ‘DRTBOX’ and ‘WHITEBOX’. Their characteristics are not known either. But we do know that, thanks to DRTBOX, 62.5 million data were collected in France and that WHITEBOX enables the recording of 7.8 million elements. ”

http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2013/10/21/france-in-the-nsa-s-crosshair-phone-networks-under-surveillance_3499741_651865.html

 

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New report: Is Huawei in Ericsson’s shoes when Athens Affair hit?

October 18, 2013 | Posted in News | By

Huawei is trying to clear its name from the allegations of spying. But is Huawei really worse and compromised than Ericsson.

Ericsson backdoored products were used by intelligence agencies to spy on Greek government officials and hundred of VIP mobile phones, yet Ericsson did not suffer from the same level of ban and bad press that Huawei did get.

Is it a cultural bias against Huawei? A political and economical against chinese manufacturer? Or the level of compromission of Huawei is much higher, prompting this reaction.

Huawei is nevertheless trying to clear its name from these allegations with the following report “Cyber Security Perspectives” by John Suffolk, Huawei SVP & Global Cyber Security Officer.

PDF Report: Huawei Cyber Security White Paper (Oct. 2013)

Huawei: We are not spying on you.

 

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