None of Open RAN is any less secure than proprietary programs
Democracies Need Open Networks to Counter China’s 5G Big Brother
By Weifeng Zhong
Tuesday, March 22, 2022, 2:30 PM
The Promise of Openness
RAN is the part of the wireless infrastructure—consisting of antennas, base stations and much more—that connects consumer devices such as mobile phones and smartwatches to the optical fiber internet. Conventional telecom gear-makers such as Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia offer full-stack RAN equipment where the software is proprietary and the hardware parts are not interoperable (imagine having to light a Marlboro cigarette with a Marlboro lighter). Once a wireless carrier purchases certain gear, the relationship is locked in for at least several years. Huawei’s competitively priced equipment has done very well on that front, boosting its share of the global telecom equipment market to more than 30 percent at its height.
Open RAN aims to revolutionize 5G and future-generations software with open architecture and community-developed standards, which would enable hardware parts, now uncoupled from the software, to be made interchangeably by any manufacturer in any nation. So while the United States doesn’t make full-stack 5G equipment, there are domestic companies that can make at least some parts, and the United States remains the envy of the world in software development.
Besides bringing more competition to the hardware market, Open RAN’s software ecosystem has the potential to be more secure than proprietary systems from attacks from China’s Huawei, ZTE and beyond. Proponents of proprietary software often argue that an open system would expose its vulnerabilities and attract attackers, but that’s a repeatedly recycled myth. When a community of developers collaborates transparently on building a system, more sets of eyes will be watching for bugs and fixing them promptly. Malware like what was in Huawei’s software update in 2012 would be known by more than the intelligence community, and it would not be kept under wraps for 10 long years.
The debate about the security of Open RAN echoes the one about the security of open-source software development, where the source code is completely transparent. The community had debated about its security compared to traditional, proprietary software for years, but the evidence has spoken for itself. Some of the most popular software programs today are open-source, such as the operating system Linux, the programming language Python and the web browser Mozilla Firefox. None of them is any less secure than proprietary programs.
www.lawfareblog.com/...networks-counter-chinas-5g-big-brother