joestar writes: Fairphone, the European manufacturer of mobile phones with a reduced environmental impact, has announced a partnership to offer /e/OS, the most "de-Googled" and pro-privacy Android OS, on their latest model Fairphone 3. An interesting move that reminds me of the recent introduction of the Google-free Huawei Mate 30. A pithy explainer of its "privacy by design ecosystem" -- and the point of "Android without Google" -- further notes: "We have removed many pieces of code that send your personal data to remote servers without your consent. We don't scan your data in your phone or in your cloud space, and we don't track your location a hundred times a day or collect what you're doing with your apps."

According to TechCrunch, the e/OS variant of the Firephone 3 ships from May 6, priced at just under 480 euros -- "a 30 euro premium on the Googley flavor of Android you get on the standard Fairphone 3." The report adds that existing owners of the Fairphone 3 can manually install /e/OS gratis via an installer on its website.

EU-based Internet governance body RIPE is opposing a proposal to remodel core internet protocols, a proposal backed by the Chinese government, Chinese telecoms, and Chinese networking equipment vendor Huawei. From a report: Named "New IP," this proposal consists of a revamped version of the TCP/IP standards to accommodate new technologies, a "shutoff protocol" to cut off misbehaving parts of the internet, and a new "top-to-bottom" governance model that decentralizes the internet and puts it into the hands of a few crucial node operators. The New IP proposal was submitted last year to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and brought to the public's attention following a Financial Times report last month. The proposal received immediate criticism from the general public and privacy advocates due to its obvious attempt to hide internet censorship features behind a technical redesign of the TCP/IP protocol stack.

The New IP proposal was described as the Chinese government's attempt to export and impose its autocratic views onto the rest of the internet and its infrastructure. Millions of eyebrows were raised when authoritarian countries like Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia expressed support for the proposal. In a blog post this week, RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry for Europe, West Asia, and the former USSR, formally expressed a public opinion against China New IP proposal. "Do we need New IP? I don't think we do," said Marco Hogewoning, the current acting Manager Public Policy and Internet Governance at the RIPE NCC. "Although certain technical challenges exist with the current Internet model, I do not believe that we need a whole new architecture to address them."

Huawei was recently caught passing off photos taken with a DSLR as ones shot with one of its phones. PhoneDog reports: Earlier this month, Huawei kicked off a contest for its Next Image community, and a video on Weibo included several high-quality photos and at the end said they were "taken with Huawei smartphones." As South China Morning Post notes, though, Weibo user Jamie-hua found that some of those photos were actually taken with a $3,500 Nikon D850 DSLR camera. The photos were found on 500px, an online photography site, and were taken by photographer Su Tie.

Huawei has since apologized and said that the photos were incorrectly marked due to "an oversight by the editor." The company has also updated its original promo video for the contest to remove the claim that the images were taken with Huawei phones. This isn't the first time something like this has happened to Huawei. In 2018, an ad appeared to show that a selfie was taken with the Huawei Nova 3, but it was actually snapped with a DSLR.

Huawei launched its Mate X foldable phone at MWC 2019, following up with the Mate XS in February this year. The latter foldable has enjoyed a wider launch of sorts, but the firm has revealed that it's still making a hefty loss on the device. From a report: Huawei consumer group CEO Richard Yu told media in China that even though the Mate XS retails for an eye-watering 16,999 yuan (~$2,408), the firm has lost between $60 million and $70 million. This is despite earlier claims that the phone is seeing high demand, suggesting that the company is willing to swallow losses to encourage foldable adoption.

A group of U.S. security agencies is urging the Federal Communications Commission to revoke China Telecom's permission to operate in the United States. From a report: "This recommendation reflects the substantial and unacceptable national security and law enforcement risks" associated with China Telecom's access to the U.S. telecommunications network, the agencies said in a filing at the FCC. The U.S. and China are at odds over a suite of issues such as the spread of the novel coronavirus, trade, and security of telecommunications networks. U.S. officials have moved to bar Chinese gear maker Huawei Technologies as a security threat, a assertion the company denies.

Thursday's recommendation to revoke an authorization held by China Telecom since 2007 is part of a review announced last year by the FCC, as the agency barred China Mobile Ltd. from the U.S. market. The FCC usually follows recommendations from security agencies. "The threat from China Telecom is a reflection of the threat that we see from Chinese telecommunications companies generally," said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security. "They are beholden to the government of China both by law and in fact to do its bidding."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A study published on Wednesday by Cisco's Talos security group makes clear that the alternative isn't suitable for everyone -- namely those who may be targeted by nation-sponsored hackers or other skilled, well-financed, and determined attack groups. The researchers spent about $2,000 over several months testing fingerprint authentication offered by Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Huawei, and three lock makers. The result: on average, fake fingerprints were able to bypass sensors at least once roughly 80 percent of the time.

The percentages are based on 20 attempts for each device with the best fake fingerprint the researchers were able to create. While Apple Apple products limit users to five attempts before asking for the PIN or password, the researchers subjected the devices to 20 attempts (that is, multiple groups of from one or more attempts). Of the 20 attempts, 17 were successful. Other products tested permitted significantly more or even an unlimited number of unsuccessful tries. Tuesday's report was quick to point out that the results required several months of painstaking work, with more than 50 fingerprint molds created before getting one to work. The study also noted that the demands of the attack -- which involved obtaining a clean image of a target's fingerprint and then getting physical access to the target's device -- meant that only the most determined and capable adversaries would succeed. The most susceptible devices were the AICase padlock and Huawei's Honor 7x and Samsung's Note 9 Android phones, "all of which were bypassed 100 percent of the time," the report says. "Fingerprint authentication in the iPhone 8, MacBook Pro 2018, and the Samsung S10 came next, where the success rate was more than 90 percent. Five laptop models running Windows 10 and two USB drives -- the Verbatim Fingerprint Secure and the Lexar Jumpdrive F35 -- performed the best, with researchers achieving a 0-percent success rate."

China was the biggest source of applications for international patents in the world last year, pushing the United States out of the top spot it has held since the global system was set up more than 40 years ago, the U.N. patent agency said on Tuesday. From a report: The World Intellectual Property Organization, which oversees a system for countries to share recognition of patents, said 58,990 applications were filed from China last year, beating out the United States which filed 57,840. China's figure was a 200-fold increase in just 20 years, it said. The United States had filed the most applications in the world every year since the Patent Cooperation Treaty system was set up in 1978. More than half of patent applications -- 52.4 % -- now come from Asia, with Japan ranking third, followed by Germany and South Korea. [...] According to the WIPO data, China's Huawei, the world's biggest maker of telecoms equipment, was the top corporate patent filer for the third consecutive year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Huawei is still using components made by U.S. companies in its newest flagship smartphone, a Financial Times teardown has found, despite the U.S. all but blacklisting the Chinese telecoms equipment manufacturer. The teardown was done by XYZone, a Shenzhen-based company that disassembles smartphones and identifies the suppliers of their components. The biggest surprise was that some parts from U.S. companies were still ending up in the newest Huawei smartphone, despite the U.S. all but banning its companies from selling to the Chinese tech company.

The P40's radio-frequency front-end modules were, according to XYZone's teardown analysis, produced by Qualcomm, Skyworks, and Qorvo, three U.S. chip companies. RF front-end modules are critical parts of the phone that are attached to the antennas and required to make calls and connect to the Internet. The Qualcomm component is covered by a license from the U.S. Commerce Department, according to a person familiar with the company. [...] The "Entity List" designation means that U.S. companies have to apply for a license to export any U.S.-origin technologies to Huawei. The U.S. government has granted a "temporary general license" to its companies, allowing them to sell to Huawei to service existing products -- helping clients such as telecoms carriers that may need to replace parts of their wireless equipment. But the general license does not cover sales for the purpose of making new products, such as the P40 smartphone. For that, companies must seek individual licenses, and the Department of Commerce has not said which ones it has granted them to. A spokesperson for Huawei said the company has "always complied with any export control regulations of various countries, including the United States" and that "all the product materials are obtained legally from our global partners, and we insist on working with our partners to provide consumers with high quality products and services."

Also missing from the P40 are parts from U.S. chipmaker Micron. "Micron made the storage devices called NAND flash memory chips for some batches of last year's P30 smartphone, and South Korea's Samsung made the same chips for other batches," reports Ars. "The FT's copy of this year's P40 Pro appears to have only Samsung NAND flash memory chips."

Senior U.S. government officials have agreed to new rules to cut off Huawei from global chip suppliers, according to a Reuters report Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. CNET reports: Under the new measures, foreign companies that use American chipmaking equipment would first need to secure a license before supplying some chips to Huawei, the report says. The focus of the new rules is to restrict the sale of more sophisticated chips to the Chinese telecom giant rather than generic, more widely available chips. Trump hasn't signed off on the proposed new measures yet, but if he does, a slew of US tech companies stand to lose, like Apple and Qualcomm along with Huawei. It could also negatively impact the world's largest chipmaker, Taiwan's TSMC, the report says.

China's homegrown operating systems haven't made much of a dent on the global stage. Now there's a Linux-based system that's aimed at weaning the country off Windows. From a report: UOS, or Unified Operating System, hit a new milestone after its first stable release in January: Union Tech's OS can now boot in 30 seconds on China-made chips. It's an important step as Chinese tech companies look to reduce their dependence on US-made software and hardware. The struggles of ZTE and Huawei illustrate this clearly: The former was reliant on chips made in the US to produce smartphones, while the latter has the difficult task of selling Android handsets outside China without Google apps or services. The "current international climate" has made it imperative for China to have its own foundational software to avoid being cut off by the US, said the general manager of Union Tech, Liu Wenhan. While Chinese operating systems currently account for less than 1% of the market, Liu said he expects them to grow to 20% to 30% in the future. Integrating homegrown Chinese chips could be the biggest accomplishment of UOS if it pans out. Although Chinese computer chips still don't approach the sophistication of those created by US-based companies, Union Tech said that it is actively working with Chinese chipmakers like Loongson and Sunway to facilitate the gradual replacement of American technology in the Chinese government and pillar industries. In December, Beijing ordered all government offices and public institutions to remove foreign computer equipment and software within three years.

President Trump on Thursday signed into law a bill banning the use of federal funds to purchase equipment from telecom companies deemed a national security threat, such as Chinese telecom group Huawei. From a report: The Secure and Trusted Communications Act, which the Senate passed in February and the House approved last year, will also require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to establish a $1 billion fund to help small telecom groups remove existing equipment that is deemed to be a threat. "Securing our networks from malicious foreign interference is critical to America's wireless future, especially as some communications providers rely on equipment from companies like Huawei that pose an immense threat to America's national and economic security," the bill's House sponsors, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.), and Reps. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) and Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), said in a statement.

According to a report from The Information, Huawei expects to see a 20% drop in sales of its Android smartphones during 2020, thanks largely to U.S. government restrictions on Huawei's access to American technology, including Google software. 9to5Google reports: "Huawei's overseas smartphone sales didn't collapse last year in part because the company could keep selling some of its old models that the Google ban didn't affect," reports The Information. "But this year, Huawei expects its shipments to fall to around 190 million to 200 million smartphones, according to these people." The 240 million figure in 2019 was thanks largely in part to the timing of the U.S. ban. Huawei's extremely popular P30 and P30 Pro smartphones still shipped with Google apps in most regions and, because they were launched before the ban took place, Huawei was able to continue updating the devices, even launching a slightly revamped variant to boost sales. This year will certainly be bleaker as Huawei won't be able to support Google apps on its P40 series, set to launch later this month. Other factors such as the coronavirus outbreak could only further have an impact on Huawei's sales this year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China's Huawei, which for years has denied violating American trade sanctions on Iran, produced internal company records in 2010 that show it was directly involved in sending prohibited U.S. computer equipment to Iran's largest mobile-phone operator. Two Huawei packing lists, dated December 2010, included computer equipment made by Hewlett-Packard Co and destined for the Iranian carrier, internal Huawei documents reviewed by Reuters show. Another Huawei document, dated two months later, stated: "Currently the equipment is delivered to Tehran, and waiting for the custom clearance."

The packing lists and other internal documents, reported here for the first time, provide the strongest documentary evidence to date of Huawei's involvement in alleged trade sanctions violations. They could bolster Washington's multifaceted campaign to check the power of Huawei, the world's leading telecommunications-equipment maker. The newly obtained documents involve a multi-million dollar telecommunications project in Iran that figures prominently in an ongoing criminal case Washington has brought against the Chinese company and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. The daughter of Huawei's founder, Meng has been fighting extradition from Canada to the United States since her arrest in Vancouver in December 2018. Huawei and Meng have denied the charges, which involve bank fraud, wire fraud and other allegations. The documents, which aren't cited in the criminal case, provide new details about Huawei's role in providing an Iranian telecom carrier with numerous computer servers, switches and other equipment made by HP, as well as software made by other American companies at the time, including Microsoft, Symantec and Novell. "A U.S. indictment alleges that Huawei and Meng participated in a fraudulent scheme to obtain prohibited U.S. goods and technology for Huawei's Iran-based business, and move money out of Iran by deceiving Western banks," the report adds. "The indictment accuses Huawei and Meng of surreptitiously using an "unofficial subsidiary" in Iran called Skycom Tech Co Ltd to obtain the prohibited goods."

The documents also show that Chinese company, Panda International Information Technology Co, was involved in shipping gear to Iran too.

The Senate unanimously approved legislation on Thursday that would ban the use of federal funds to purchase telecommunications equipment from companies deemed a national security threat, such as Chinese group Huawei. From a report: The bipartisan Secure and Trusted Telecommunications Networks Act, which the House passed in December, bans the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from giving funds to U.S. telecom groups to purchase equipment from companies deemed threats. The bill would require the FCC to establish a $1 billion fund to help smaller telecom providers to rip out and replace equipment from such companies, and to compile a list of firms seen as posing a threat to telecom networks.

9Game.com, a portal for downloading free Android games, was the mobile app store hosting the most malicious apps in 2019. From a report: 9Game ranked number one on the list of app stores with the most "new" malicious app uploads, but also number one on the list of app stores with the highest concentration of malicious apps overall. According to RiskIQ's 2019 Mobile App Threat Landscape report, 61,669 new malicious apps were uploaded on 9Game in 2019. In this ranking, 9Game was followed at a considerable distance by the official Android app store -- the Google Play Store -- with 25,647 new malicious apps. Completing the top 5 are Qihoo 360's Zhushou store, the Feral app store, and Huawei's Vmall app store. But while the Play Store ranked second on the list of new malware uploads, its sheer size diluted the impact these malicious apps had on Android users. The Play Store didn't rank at all in the top 5 app stores with the highest concentration of malicious apps, which included (1) 9Game, (2) the Feral app store, (3) the Vmall app store, (4) the Xiaomi app store, and (5) Qihoo 360's Zhushou store.

Billions of devices -- many of them already patched -- are affected by a Wi-Fi vulnerability that allows nearby attackers to decrypt sensitive data sent over the air, researchers said on Wednesday at the RSA security conference. From a report: The vulnerability exists in Wi-Fi chips made by Cypress Semiconductor and Broadcom, the latter a chipmaker Cypress acquired in 2016. The affected devices include iPhones, iPads, Macs, Amazon Echos and Kindles, Android devices, Raspberry Pi 3's, and Wi-Fi routers from Asus and Huawei. Eset, the security company that discovered the vulnerability, said the flaw primarily affects Cyperess' and Broadcom's FullMAC WLAN chips, which are used in billions of devices. Eset has named the vulnerability Kr00k, and it is tracked as CVE-2019-15126.

Manufacturers have made patches available for most or all of the affected devices, but it's not clear how many devices have installed the patches. Of greatest concern are vulnerable wireless routers, which often go unpatched indefinitely. "This results in scenarios where client devices that are unaffected (either patched or using different Wi-Fi chips not vulnerable to Kr00k) can be connected to an access point (often times beyond an individual's control) that is vulnerable," Eset researchers wrote in a research paper published on Wednesday. "The attack surface is greatly increased, since an adversary can decrypt data that was transmitted by a vulnerable access point to a specific client (which may or may not be vulnerable itself)."

The Trump administration is considering changing U.S. regulations to allow it to block shipments of chips to Huawei from companies such as Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker. Reuters reports: New restrictions on commerce with China's Huawei are among several options to be considered at high-level U.S. meetings this week and next. The chip proposal has been drafted but its approval is far from certain, one of the sources said. The measure would be a blow to the world's no. 2 smartphone maker as well as to TSMC, a major producer of chips for Huawei's HiSilicon unit and mobile phone rivals Apple and Qualcomm.

"What they're trying to do is make sure that no chips go to Huawei that they can possibly control," the second source said. To target global chip sales to Huawei, U.S. authorities would alter the Foreign Direct Product Rule, which subjects some foreign-made goods based on U.S. technology or software to U.S. regulations. Under the draft proposal, the U.S. government would force foreign companies that use U.S. chipmaking equipment to seek a U.S. license before supplying Huawei -- a major expansion of export control authority that could anger U.S. allies worldwide.

"Controversial Chinese technology firm Huawei and its Santa Clara-based subsidiary Futurewei allegedly stole trade secrets from San Jose tech giant Cisco and used them to copy Cisco routers," reports the San Jose Mercury News, citing the federal indictment released Thursday. The U.S. Department of Justice claimed in its racketeering indictment and a news release that Huawei and its Silicon Valley subsidiary stole operating system code and other data needed to make routers, and used the pilfered secrets to make Huawei-branded routers sold in the U.S. The indictment also alleges that five other unnamed U.S. firms were targeted. Cisco is not mentioned by name in the indictment, which refers to "Company 1." But the indictment cites a lawsuit filed in Texas against Futurewei and Huawei over the alleged router-data theft...

The indictment alleges that when the Texas litigation started, Futurewei and Huawei claimed to have already removed misappropriated code from products, and recalled routers containing that code. However, the firms had erased the memory drives of the recalled routers and sent them to China before they could be accessed, "thus destroying evidence of Huawei and Futurewei's illicit conduct," the indictment claims. "Also, in an effort to destroy evidence, Futurewei attempted to remotely access Huawei routers that had already been sold in the United States and erase the misappropriated source code contained therein," the indictment alleges, without saying whether the government believes the attempted erasure was successful.

The indictment does not make clear how U.S. prosecutors believe Futurewei and Huawei obtained the copyrighted code, but it claims the two companies had "hired or attempted to hire Company 1 employees and directed these employees to misappropriate Company 1 source code...." The two companies also engaged in "flagrant plagiarism" of Cisco's user manuals for routers, the suit alleged. While the allegations of stolen Cisco secrets concern routers sold in the U.S. in 2002, the indictment charges Huawei, Futurewei and two other Huawei subsidiaries with running a scheme from 2000 to the present "to operate and grow the worldwide business of Huawei and its parents, global affiliates and subsidiaries through the deliberate and repeated misappropriation of intellectual property of companies headquartered or with offices in the United States."

An anonymous reader shares a report: It comes as no surprise that the guidance computers aboard the Apollo 11 spacecraft were impossibly primitive compared to the pocket computers we all carry around 50 years later. But on his website, an Apple developer analyzed the tech specs even further and found that even something as simple as a modern USB charger is packed with more processing power. Forrest Heller, a software developer who formerly worked on Occipital's Structure 3D scanner accessory for mobile devices, but who now works for Apple, broke down the numbers when it comes to the processing power, memory, and storage capacity of Google's 18W Pixel charger, Huawei's 40W SuperCharge, the Anker PowerPort Atom PD 2 charger, and the Apollo 11 guidance computer, also referred to as the AGC. It's not easy to directly compare those modern devices with the 50-year-old AGC, which was custom developed by NASA for controlling and automating the guidance and navigation systems aboard the Apollo 11 spacecraft.

In a time when computers were the size of giant rooms, the AGC was contained in a box just a few feet in length because it was one of the first computers to be made with integrated circuits. Instead of plopping in an off the shelf processor, NASA's engineers designed and built the AGC with somewhere around 5,600 electronic gates that were capable of performing nearly 40,000 simple mathematical calculations every second. While we measure processor speeds in gigahertz these days, the AGC chugged along at 1.024 MHz. By comparison, the Anker PowerPort Atom PD 2 USB-C charger includes a Cypress CYPD4225 processor running at 48 MHz with the twice the RAM of the AGC, and almost twice the storage space for software instructions.

Ratcheting up its pressure campaign against Huawei and its affiliates, the Department of Justice and the FBI announced today that it has brought 16 charges against Huawei in a sprawling case with major geopolitical implications. From a report: Huawei is being charged with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statute. The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies to access those companies' intellectual property, only to then misappropriate that property and use it to fund Huawei's business. In addition to conspiracy, Huawei and the defendants are charged with lying to federal investigators and obstructing the investigation into the company's activity. According to the statement published by the Department of Justice, "As part of the scheme, Huawei allegedly launched a policy instituting a bonus program to reward employees who obtained confidential information from competitors. The policy made clear that employees who provided valuable information were to be financially rewarded."