Comes with a special surprise inside every box ..
- oddbits
- Mar 8, 2019
- 2 min read
I was opening a small office in an old building in the UK with no wired Internet service. I decided to use a wireless 4g service from Three.co.uk as an easy and good enough option to start with. I ordered online, enticed by the "unlimited data" for this unit. It took about a month of the router to arrive. Today I unboxed it and slipped in the SIM card and powered up - all as easy as can be.
Once I had the unit powered up I decided to do a quick test and visit hacker news at https://news.ycombinator.com. I had turned the 4g off on my phone so I would be able to see how the new router was working when this screen appeared.
I chose NOT to go to the compromised site but I did chose to look at the security certificate.
This was rather odd - a thirty year certificate!
So I decide to look at the details.
A root certificate from China in my Three.co.uk 4G router - that was an unadvertised feature.
For those who like details -- more photos.
It is a public key after all so I thought I would share.
WOW, it even comes with enhanced DNS.
And that is the end of the certificate information.
I have looked at the documentation with the unit and I have 14 days from receipt to ship the unit back to Three.co.uk and cancel my contract. So glad I bought it online, as the documentation says that if I had purchased it in one of their stores I would not be able to return it :-(
I have seen a lot of articles in the new about Huawei and security but frankly I was not really following it that closely. I assumed that there was the typical news hype cycle and that there was likely a heavy dose of politics involved.
But WOW - I would never have expected to find root certificate for China in a device purchased in the UK. That gives a new meaning to "A special surprise in every box".
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