US Commerce Department delays Huawei ban for 90 Days

US Commerce Department will delay 90 days before to apply the announced Huawei ban to avoid huge disruption of the operations.

During the weekend, the Reuters agency revealed in exclusive that Alphabet Inc’s Google has suspended some business with Huawei after Trump’s ban on the telco giant.

On Thursday, President Trump added Huawei Technologies to a trade blacklist, but on Friday, the U.S. Commerce Department said it was considering to debunk the decision on the company to “prevent the interruption of existing network operations and equipment”.

Now a Commerce Department filing confirmed that delay does not change the Trump’ ban, but gives a 90-days temporary license that will grant Huawei to continue doing business with American businesses.

The Temporary General License aims at preventing disruption to the operations of the company that could have a dramatic impact on mobile users and broadband network operators.

“The Temporary General License grants operators time to make other arrangements and (gives) the Department space to determine the appropriate long term measures for Americans and foreign telecommunications providers that currently rely on Huawei equipment for critical services,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.

“In short, this license will allow operations to continue for existing Huawei mobile phone users and rural broadband networks.”

While the tech giant is in the middle of a heated debate, FiveEyes intelligence agencies believe the Huawei equipment for 5G infrastructure poses a “significant network security risk,” for this reason, they asked mobile companies to avoid using the equipment of the Chinese company.

The Chinese company has been founded by a former People’s Liberation Army official in 1987. The US was the first country that warned of the security risks associated with the usage of the products manufactured by the Chinese telecommunications giant.

US intelligence believes Huawei equipment is taitend with backdoors that could allow Chinese intelligence to spy on communications networks of rival countries.

In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Government is urging its allies to exclude Huawei from critical infrastructure and 5G architectures.

The United States highlighted the risks for national security in case of adoption of Huawei equipment and is inviting internet providers and telco operators in allied countries to ban Huawei.

Chinese equipment is broadly adopted in many allied countries, including Germany, Italy an, Japan. Many countries are going to build 5G infrastructure, but the approach of their governments is completely different.

Now the US Commerce Department delayed the bad for 90 days. Experts believe that Huawei is only one of the Chinese companies that will face similar measures because could threaten the economic and technological leadership of the United States.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Huawei ban, China)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.