I’m betting that this isn’t going over very well at 1 Infinite Loop at the moment.
Russian officials are calling out Apple over their security issues. A Reuters report says that the Russian Government wants Apple along with SAP to hand over source code so that they can prove that they have no security issues:
The Russian proposal was voiced last week when Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov met Apple’s general manager in Russia, Peter Engrob Nielsen, and SAP’s Russian managing director, Vyacheslav Orekhov, the Communications Ministry said in a statement.
It said the proposal was designed to ensure the rights of consumers and corporate users to the privacy of their personal data, as well as for state security interests.
While couched in the language of protecting privacy, any Russian move to force these companies to divulge the inner workings of their software could pose a major threat to their viability if they were to lose control of the source code.
Given the current climate of relations between Russia and the west, this has got to be a ploy. At least one would hope so. And you can bet that there’s zero chance that this would ever happen. Though they did invoke the name of Edward Snowden to further force the issue:
“Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 and U.S. intelligence services’ public statements about the strengthening of surveillance of Russia in 2014 have raised a serious question of trust in foreign software and hardware,” Nikiforov said in the statement released late on Tuesday.
That’s not good. Neither is increasing pressure from China. Fang Xingdong who is the founder of Blogchina and web research consultancy Chinalabs as well as being the director of the Center for Internet and Society at Zhejiang University of Media and Communications is saying that Chinese officials should be banned from using the iPhone. Here’s a Google translated document (original version can be found here) that spells out his concerns:
Internet Lab founder Fang Xingdong told reporters that for the Apple exposed “reserved port” for a long time, consumers did not know, so there is a certain risk. He stressed that as a technical support side, Apple could get some of the data used for the sale, but this exposes data acquisition significantly exceeded the limits of technical support.
What he’s referring to is the infamous iOS backdoor gong show that blew up last week. I’m pretty sure that this is the last thing that Apple needs in a market it wants to make inroads into.
Clearly, Tim Cook and company have some work to do to put these fires out.
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This entry was posted on July 30, 2014 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, China, Russia, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Apple Under Pressure In China And Russia Over Security Issues
I’m betting that this isn’t going over very well at 1 Infinite Loop at the moment.
Russian officials are calling out Apple over their security issues. A Reuters report says that the Russian Government wants Apple along with SAP to hand over source code so that they can prove that they have no security issues:
The Russian proposal was voiced last week when Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov met Apple’s general manager in Russia, Peter Engrob Nielsen, and SAP’s Russian managing director, Vyacheslav Orekhov, the Communications Ministry said in a statement.
It said the proposal was designed to ensure the rights of consumers and corporate users to the privacy of their personal data, as well as for state security interests.
While couched in the language of protecting privacy, any Russian move to force these companies to divulge the inner workings of their software could pose a major threat to their viability if they were to lose control of the source code.
Given the current climate of relations between Russia and the west, this has got to be a ploy. At least one would hope so. And you can bet that there’s zero chance that this would ever happen. Though they did invoke the name of Edward Snowden to further force the issue:
“Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 and U.S. intelligence services’ public statements about the strengthening of surveillance of Russia in 2014 have raised a serious question of trust in foreign software and hardware,” Nikiforov said in the statement released late on Tuesday.
That’s not good. Neither is increasing pressure from China. Fang Xingdong who is the founder of Blogchina and web research consultancy Chinalabs as well as being the director of the Center for Internet and Society at Zhejiang University of Media and Communications is saying that Chinese officials should be banned from using the iPhone. Here’s a Google translated document (original version can be found here) that spells out his concerns:
Internet Lab founder Fang Xingdong told reporters that for the Apple exposed “reserved port” for a long time, consumers did not know, so there is a certain risk. He stressed that as a technical support side, Apple could get some of the data used for the sale, but this exposes data acquisition significantly exceeded the limits of technical support.
What he’s referring to is the infamous iOS backdoor gong show that blew up last week. I’m pretty sure that this is the last thing that Apple needs in a market it wants to make inroads into.
Clearly, Tim Cook and company have some work to do to put these fires out.
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This entry was posted on July 30, 2014 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, China, Russia, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.