A meeting between Huawei executives and UK security officials has led to an agreement the Chinese vendor will change its practices.

Huawei will pen a formal letter to the National Cyber Security Centre which covers the agreement in detail. The letter will include what measures will be taken in order to alleviate concerns.

The meeting was set up to avoid a ban of the vendor’s telecoms equipment in the UK similar to the US and Australia. Countries including

Chinese telecoms vendor ZTE may be put back on the US’ naughty list after seemingly violating sanctions against Venezuela.

ZTE was forced to suspend its operations earlier this year following a ban on purchasing US-made products vital to its business for trading with Iran and North Korea against US sanctions, which it estimates cost around $1bn.

The firm was granted a reprieve from the US ban in return for agreeing to reshuffle...

Mere days after the US petitioned its allies to ban the use of Huawei’s equipment over security concerns, New Zealand has blocked a telco from doing so.

The operator, Spark, posted a statement today claiming the Director-General of the Government Communications Security Bureau rejected its request to use Huawei’s 5G equipment.

In the statement, Spark wrote:

The feud between the US and China continues to gather pace ahead of a tense G20 summit as the nation petitions its allies to ditch Chinese 5G equipment.

Officials have long held concerns that equipment from Chinese manufacturers could be used for spying. While the US is most vocal, other countries have voiced similar views and either banned equipment – such as Australia – or taken measures to mitigate the risks, such as the UK and Canada.

All four of the aforementioned countries are part of the...

Iran claims it has foiled several cyber attacks staged by Israel which included a new version of the infamous Stuxnet malware.

Stuxnet is thought to have been developed in a joint effort between Israeli and US intelligence agencies.

“Recently, we discovered a new generation of Stuxnet which consisted of several parts … and was trying to enter our systems,” the ISNA news agency reported Gholamreza Jalali, head of Iran’s civil defense agency, as saying last week.

A New York Times

Chinese government officials are lobbying their Australian counterparts to reverse the ban of Huawei’s equipment in national 5G networks.

A ban of the equipment was implemented by ex-Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, who was ousted earlier this year. Chinese officials have praised his replacement, Scott Morrison, for a more “positive attitude” towards China.

Beijing is hoping to capitalise on this more positive attitude in order to get the ban on Chinese telecoms equipment reversed.

During...

A potential diplomatic crisis is brewing as Belgian federal prosecutors blame Britain for hacking the nation’s largest telecoms operator.

Belgacom was first hacked back in the summer of 2012. The company’s security researchers noticed anomalies but it wasn’t until the following year they had an idea of the problem.

A malware which disguised itself as Microsoft software had infected Belgacom’s system and was stealing data. NSA documents released by Edward Snowden indicated...

The UK government has disclosed a ‘reckless’ campaign of Russian cyber attacks targeting political institutions, businesses, media, and sport.

In findings by the National Cyber Security Centre, a number of international attacks have been linked to Russian intelligence agency GRU.

The attacks, it claims, have affected citizens in a large number of countries – including Russia – and cost national economies millions of pounds.

UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said:

The head of UK spy agency GCHQ has warned 5G will increase threats of digital terrorism due to its expected use in critical infrastructure.

Jeremy Fleming, Head of UK spy agency GCHQ, wrote in the Sunday Times to raise his concerns about the next generation of mobile networks.

5G is expected to expand beyond its current primary use for mobile broadband to connect...

An oversight board set up in the UK to monitor the use of Huawei’s equipment in critical telecoms infrastructure has identified ‘new risks’ to security.

While countries like the US and Australia have taken hardline stances against the use of Chinese telecoms equipment from the likes of Huawei in critical infrastructure, the UK has been more accommodating.

Chinese telecoms equipment...

Trump’s administration continues to be wary of Chinese telecoms firms as it asks the FCC not to grant a license to China Mobile.

Citing national security concerns, the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recommended the FCC deny China Mobile Ltd’s application to offer telecommunications services from within the United States.

State-owned China Mobile is the world’s largest phone carrier by subscribers, with over 902 million users as of June 2018. The...

Cybersecurity firm Symantec has exposed Chinese hacking of satellite communications and telecoms in the United States and Southeast Asia.

The company’s AI-based Targeted Attack Analytics (TAA) system helped researchers expose a hacking campaign from a group called Thrip.

On the surface, Symantec said the activity looked innocuous. TAA alerted Symantec’s investigation team and set them on the path to discovering the attack from a group the company has been...

Following a temporary reprieve from President Trump’s ZTE ban which the company estimates cost it $3 billion, the Senate has now voted to reinstate it.

The U.S. Senate vote to reinstate the ban may not make it into law – it first has to clear the House, and then avoid being vetoed by President Trump.

ZTE is one of China’s biggest telecoms companies and became one of the first victims of Trump’s crackdown on...

Australian Labor MP Michael Danby has become the latest politician to call for a ban on buying 5G network equipment from Chinese firms claiming they are ‘controlled’ by the government.

Speaking to parliament last night, Danby requested Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull take a similar stance as in his tenure as communications minister when he barred Huawei from bidding for the National Broadband Network (NBN).

Mr Danby said:

“Now he [Malcolm Turnbull] and his government must...

Despite the latest decision from Trump’s administration to reverse the ban on ZTE, Republican Senator Marco Rubio has raised concerns after saying a bill to stop Chinese telecoms companies from operating in the US would garner super-majority support in Congress.

At the start of this month, Chinese telecoms giant ZTE was banned from operating in the US — reportedly due to violations of export restrictions and making repeated...

The extent of the UK government’s surveillance powers is staggering, but it may be forced to scale them back following a ruling they’re unlawful.

Some of the powers in question were introduced as part of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA) which was passed into law as emergency legislation in 2014. A couple of years later, the Investigatory Powers Act was enacted which Edward Snowden called 'the most extreme surveillance in the...

An analytical report has revealed serious vulnerabilities in current and future mobile networks which makes them unsuitable for smart cities and puts users at risk of surveillance.

The cybersecurity experts at Positive Technologies discovered security flaws in the 4G network core known as the EPC (Evolved Packet Core) which can be exploited through vulnerabilities in the GTP protocol.

GTP (GPRS Tunneling Protocol) is a group of...

China’s notorious internet censorship doesn’t appear to be loosening anytime soon as a man gets nine months in jail for selling VPNs.

The recently unveiled court decision revealed Deng Jiewei, a 26-year-old man from Dongguan, was sentenced for selling two VPN services on his website. He reportedly made nearly 14,000 yuan (£1642) before he was detained by police last August.

While Jiewei was sentenced in March, the court documents only circulated on Chinese social media...

The Department of Justice (DoJ) is demanding the details of all visitors to a website that helped to organise an anti-Trump protest. It’s seeking IP addresses, contact information, email content, and even photos.

DreamHost, the website’s hosting provider, is refusing to comply with the request. The company is due in court later this month.

"The website was used in the development, planning, advertisement and organisation of a violent riot that occurred in Washington...

NATO has warned cyber attacks like WannaCry and Petya could trigger Article 5 of the treaty and be met with a military response from members after the organisation said there are signs the aforementioned incidents were state-sponsored.

Article 5 is the basic principle of collective defense. An attack on a NATO member is deemed an attack on all members and, if invoked, ties others to a collective response. It has only been triggered once in NATO’s history by the United States...