China holds a kill switch. But whose fault is that?
Resistance to Chinese tech in Europe began a long time ago, with Huawei being excluded from infrastructure projects, such as building the 5G network. While there was no evidence of a Chinese government backdoor into European systems, governments didn’t want to risk it.
What was seen for a long time as moves in a trade war extended into Chinese devices being pushed out of governmental institutions, and there were attempts to overtake Chinese algorithms by forcing platforms like TikTok to change hands.
Much of what’s happening around China is political. However, many of the security concerns are legitimate, as markets are drowning in cheap Chinese-made technologies that people choose simply because they are more affordable, hence, potentially less secure.
This week, Europe is fussing about Chinese-made buses that apparently can be controlled remotely.
Oslo’s public transportation agency, Ruter, audited the city’s electric buses and found that Yutong-made vehicles can be disabled via remote-control capabilities in the bus software, diagnostics modules, and battery and power-control systems.
In reality, it means that the Chinese manufacturer could remotely stop or render those buses unusable. A Dutch company’s buses were also probed, but no such backdoor control capabilities were discovered.
Denmark’s audit came to the same conclusions, and now it’s the UK’s turn to investigate the buses.
Technically, the buses are still safe to use. They cannot be steered remotely, only stopped. So, the worst-case scenario is that your trip home will be cut short.
But you probably don’t want Beijing having any influence over your travels, do you?
Just because Chinese manufacturers have control over your vehicles doesn’t mean that control was built in for nefarious purposes. If anything, it’s simply cheaper, as the devices can be serviced remotely.
But just because something is standard, we shouldn’t dismiss it; instead, we should call for more rigorous standards.
Europe isn’t panicking. It is auditing its fleet now to assess the dangers and possibly come up with new standards for its suppliers. And not only Chinese ones, as plenty of non-Chinese manufacturers – especially those that prioritise cost over security by design – ship products with telemetry, remote update channels, and service backdoors.
Resilience is expensive. Nurses, doctors, students, and workers use buses every day, and by purposely shutting them down, a foreign actor could wreak havoc on the country.
The choice is simple, really: keep costs low or keep control.
About the author:
Jurgita Lapienytė, Editor-in-Chief at Cybernews
