For BNN Bloomberg

Huawei's Chinese ties pose risk to 5G networks: Former cybersecurity consultant to U.S. presidents

Melissa Hathaway, president of Hathaway Global Strategies and former cybersecurity consultant for U.S. presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush discusses the risks of allowing Huawei to access 5G networks.https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/huawei-s-chinese-ties-pose-risk-to-5g-networks-former-cybersecurity-consultant-to-u-s-presidents~1969869

For ITWorld Canada:

There’s no way to mitigate the possibility that network equipment from Huawei Technologies could be used by Chinese intelligence agencies for spying in Canada’s fledgling 5G networks, says a U.S. cyber expert.

“In my opinion, the risks cannot be mitigated,” Melissa Hathaway, president of a Virginia-based consultancy, a distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation based in Waterloo, Ont., and an advisor to two U.S. presidents said in an interview.

“I agree with what our British colleagues have said: Their [software] code is buggy; it has a lot of vulnerabilities in it … Their personnel really don’t know how to do secure coding. And 5G is really about secure coding because it’s about a software-defined network. You have to be able to code with security and resilience in mind to be sure the equipment you’re deploying or selling isn’t easily manipulated. So I start with that.”

The second problem, she added, is that China’s National Intelligence Law of 2017 requires any person or organization to support the state and whatever it wants, so “with 5G you can direct the company to just siphon off the data.” see full article here.