Security experts against Chinese company's NBN deal

Sydney, Oct 17(ANI): Australian security experts have warned that a Chinese company, bidding to supply equipment to the National Broadband Network (NBN), may spy or launch cyber attacks on government and businesses.

Huawei Technologies', which has links with Chinese military, has faced opposition from Indian, United States and British intelligence agencies.

An intelligence expert at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Desmond Ball, said that he does not want to sound alarmist, "but this is the highest order risk that I would see with regard to network vulnerability".

"Bids by Huawei would have to be subject to the closest scrutiny, but in the end it would be the government's responsibility to reject such an involvement," he added.

Meanwhile, Alan Dupont, director of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney, called for a robust discussion of the NBN's security risks.

"This is the critical piece of infrastructure that is going to go down over the next 30 or 40 years ... there needs to be a broader discussion of the national security implications," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Dupont, as saying.

Earlier, AT and T was threatened by the U.S. National Security Agency with loss of government business if it bought equipment for a next-generation phone system from Huawei Technologies.

The electronic spying agency was worried that its Chinese counterparts might insert "digital trapdoors" in Huawei's equipment that would function as secret listening posts. (ANI)