India’s invitation to Huawei for 5G trials sparks concerns: Insufficient security safeguards plague telecom sector

India’s invitation to Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies—a company banned in the US, which has termed it a cybersecurity threat, and from building 5G networks in Australia and New Zealand—to participate in 5G trials has aroused some concern in security and technology establishments.

The move comes eight years after India’s home ministry raised concerns that imported telecom equipment could contain “back doors” and spyware that would allow foreign governments to snoop on Indians, intercept calls or remotely control networks, posing a security threat. Huawei was banned for eight months.

Little has changed over the past decade. India still doesn’t have sufficient safeguards in the telecom sector, which forms the backbone of the digital economy, top security and technology officials said on condition of anonymity. The only thing that has changed is the technology standard — back then, the fear was of Chinese 3G equipment fitted with spyware; now it is Chinese 5G equipment.

The security threat is inevitable: it is a feature of the current capitalist economy that operates through global supply chains and in which the components of a finished product are not manufactured in one location.

If a company decides to insert backdoor into hardware products—which is the concern being flagged over the invitation to Huawei to take part in 5G trials—it is difficult to protect one’s telecom security

Experts point out two ways that governments can adopt to guard against the perceived security threat. One, set up auditing infrastructure to test and identify vulnerabilities in the telecom equipment before deploying it in the country. Two, develop the capacity to manufacture critical hardware components within the country.

India has not made progress on either front, officials say, and the security threat is not limited to Chinese companies but applies to imported telecom equipment in general.

“The department of telecom and the department of IT (information technology) have failed in setting up credible and reliable security-testing infrastructure which has inspired confidence in foreign vendors in sending equipment to India. The policy exists on paper but has not been implemented,” a top official in the security establishment with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The telecom department promised to set up security testing labs by 2013 in order to test for bugs in network equipment, the official added, but they are still not in place.

And India still imports 90% of its telecom equipment needs. India’s import of parts of mobile phones as well as telecom equipment from China increased from $1.3 billion in 2014 to $9.4 billion in 2017, according to a recent study by the ministry of commerce and industry.

This places India on the back foot at a time when state-driven cyber warfare is no more a theoretical threat. An early 2018 estimate suggested that around 200 publicly known state-on-state cyberattacks have taken place over the past decade, according to David Sanger of The New York Times.

“Hardware security is the most difficult to track and find out. Even indigenous hardware doesn’t give you a clean chit,” said Sethumadhavan Srinivasan, former director of marketing strategy for Huawei Technologies in, India.

“It is important to understand that there does exist a possibility that you could plant some kind of microchips in hardware equipment that can be used as a key to enter the network,” he added .

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