this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Google app being flagged as a virus by Huawei phones (stackdiary.com)
submitted 1 year ago by skilledtothegills to c/technology
57 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm seeing a lot of reports from users of Huawei and Honor devices have reported that their phones are incorrectly identifying Google apps as Trojan malware, specifically labeled as TrojanSMS-PA. According to the alert, this "malicious software" has the ability to send SMS messages without user consent.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

First of, your articles are about telco hardware, not smartphones software.

The german case basically boils down to Germany wanting independence in their critical infrastructure. At least officially this is so China can't affect them by for example stopping exports of repair components. Basically your source is clickbait but without the release. »German governments information security branch says no evidence of Huawei spying ... they say the boycott happened because of strategic resource independence in networking technology«

The space of classical newspaper articles is not in a good state, basically it's almost entirely propagandized to death. So you need to know your sources, please don't be the one throwing around a phys.org article on politics like it's credible information.

source on the Germany thingI could clear up this case because I happen to know that "die Zeit" (German for "the Time") is one of the few remaining relatively independent sources for stuff relating to Germany (they are biased to follow German politics in coverage but not content, currently). I also track them closely for any changes to that status, basically if they fall to anyones propaganda, the first ones to bring that to light and point it out will be the opposing propaganda. Here is their article, for your translators pleasure:
https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2023-03/5g-ausbau-bundesregierung-verbot-huawei
⁤
your source kinda goes into that direction at the end at least

But some observers raised eyebrows at the BSI's apparent dismissal of cyber security risks concerning Huawei.

"I believe it's wrong to suggest that the concerns about Chinese espionage are unfounded and easy to detect," telecom security expert Ronja Kniep told AFP.

"Even if Huawei has no official relationship with the Chinese government, that doesn't mean Chinese services aren't using the company and its technology as vehicles for espionage."

All three of Germany's main mobile network operators use infrastructure provided by Huawei, Spiegel pointed out.

So apparently the opinion of "the BSI" here is wildly out of line with Germany's government's general opinion at the time.

but wait there's more

So apparently in Germany there is this "BSI-gate" of sorts, around the incompetence and potential Russian and Chinese relations of "Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Arne Schoenbohm" (as he is quoted in your source).
So either way this person was extremely untrustworthy in this matter here.

⁤

So now to the other source. Reuters is at least well known, and the article has an author, so that's nice.

I looked into the matter somewhat. Around the same date as your article, the BBC wrote

To monitor the company, the UK set up the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, which comes under the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

In March 2019, it said it hadn't found evidence of malicious Chinese state activity, but it did identify some serious defects in Huawei's software engineering and cyber-security competence.

Seems they harshened their stance after US influence around 2020 to me too, but it's not like they where entirely unsuspicious before that influence either.