By Fran Wang
January 9, 2022 Updated: January 9, 2022
Chinese shoppers leave a Walmart store in Beijing on Jan. 3, 2012. Chinese President Hu Jintao has warned that "hostile" powers are seeking to "Westernize" the country and called for greater efforts to enhance China's cultural influence overseas. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)
Walmart has
recently struggled in China. After being accused of allegedly halting the sale
of products from Xinjiang, the retail giant received a warning issued by
Chinese police for alleged breaches of China’s cybersecurity regulations,
as the regime tightens its grip on how companies inside its borders process
data.
According
to a report dated Jan. 5 by state-owned
outlet China Quality News Network, police in the southern Chinese city of
Shenzhen discovered 19 “vulnerabilities” in Walmart’s
network infrastructure in late November, and police have now accused the
company of being slow to address the loopholes in violation of China’s
cybersecurity laws.
Walmart
was ordered to make rectifications, the report said, without mentioning any
fines or details of the vulnerabilities.
The
news outlet is backed by China’s market regulator, the State Administration for
Market Supervision.
The
retail giant and the Shenzhen police did not respond to Reuters’ requests for
comment by Jan. 7.
At the
end of December, China’s anti-graft office accused Walmart and its Sam’s Club
retail chain of “stupidity and short-sightedness” after social media users
claimed that Sam’s Club had withdrawn Xinjiang-sourced products from its
stores.
There
is no sign that the Shenzhen police warning is related to the Sam’s Club
incident.
The
Shenzhen police warning comes amid China’s stepped-up cybersecurity crackdown
on how data is collected, stored, and utilized by companies operating in China.
Companies must report vulnerabilities in their software to
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) within two
days of their discovery under a regulation passed last year.
The
telecommunications regulator disciplined Alibaba Cloud Computing for failing to
first report major flaws in its widely-used logging software.
Alibaba
Cloud found a security vulnerability in the popular, open-source logging
framework Apache Log4j2, and reported it to the Apache Software Foundation,
according to a statement from MIIT in December.
In
response, the regulator suspended for six months a cooperative partnership
with Alibaba Cloud in the areas of cybersecurity threats and
information-sharing platforms, reported a state-backed media 21st Century Business Herald, citing a notice from
the regulator.
The
report added that Alibaba’s cloud unit would be re-evaluated, and the
partnership would be restarted based on the outcome of internal reforms.
The reasons
for the suspension included failing to immediately report to the telecoms
authority and failing to effectively support the regime in managing network
security threats and vulnerabilities.
The
laws highlight the central government’s desire to strengthen control over
critical online infrastructure and data in the name of national security.
“This
vulnerability may allow remote control of equipment, which could result in
serious consequences such as the theft of sensitive information, and the disruption
of equipment services. It’s a high-threat vulnerability,” MIIT said in a
statement on the Apache Log4j2 issue.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-police-put-walmart-on-notice-over-violation-to-chinas-cybersecurity-law_4201200.html
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