Press

"I think I’m a savvy, educated user, and the reality is, no, that’s actually not enough," says Vern Paxson, cofounder of the network traffic analysis firm Corelight and a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked on the study along with Jianjun Chen, a postdoctoral researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, and Jian Jiang, senior director of engineering at Shape Security.

“Cellular equipment is special, it is specifically designed to be wiretapped and attackers have used this facility to conduct wiretapping attacks,” Nicholas Weaver, a senior staff researcher on computer security at the University of California, Berkeley, told International Business Times in an email.

“Unfortunately, most developers might not know … how intrusive a given SDK can be when building their own software, while users are completely unaware of the fact that, when running a mobile app, there might be dozens of other organizations potentially collecting sensitive and personal data,” said Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, a research scientist at the International Computer Science Institute’s Networking and Security division and a member of the team that developed Lumen, an app that monitors which SDKs your phone is transmitting data to.

“Huawei of course has the capability [to spy and steal secrets] but Huawei can say with a straight face that there’s no evidence of them having used the capability,” says Nicholas Weaver, staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, University of California, Berkeley. “Countries with 5G have a choice: Go with Huawei and let China have an easy mode [to access telco networks.] Or go with European competitors and spend more money.”