A damning report out of the US alleges that Chinese technology giant Huawei could reportedly access the mobile networks that it helped build around the world, and that it has been able to do so for more than a decade.
In a report in the Wall Street Journal, unnamed US officials gave details of the privileged access enjoyed by Huawei, exploiting access methodologies typically reserved for law enforcement agencies in host countries. These claims were allegedly disclosed by the US to intelligence partners Germany and the UK at the end of 2019.
The backdoors – which isn’t really an accurate term, given they are inserted to allow law enforcement agencies access to carrier equipment – are found in base stations, antennas and switching gear, according to WSJ, but the design of these access paths was such that Huawei could – and did – access them in production environments.
“We have evidence that Huawei has the capability secretly to access sensitive and personal information in systems it maintains and sells around the world,” Robert O’Brien, national security adviser, reportedly said.
Could Huawei have exploited similar access in Australia? Given that the firm has communications equipment in some of our 3G and 4G networks, the possibility exists, but the WSJ report doesn’t discuss Australia.
Huawei in Australia has been approached for comment.
I honestly think this is BS. America was recently talking about subsiding the competition to Huawei… I think it’s because America likes to be in control of the spying gear around the world, so they can access the networks.
America obviously doesn’t trust China, but let’s be honest, they do exactly the same thing. The pot calling the kettle black…
This information if true shows how stupid the US is as they also knew this could be done by them since 2009. Proving Huawei actually used the access the US knew it could use may be difficult. In any case, the US can’t be trusted, they lie to draw us into wars, this is just another war.
There’s another angle to this report that is interesting. The USA didn’t try to disclose this new info to Australia.
In previous Australian mainstream news articles going on about the ban, it was reported that it was Australia which convinced the USA agencies of the danger Huawei represented to the upcoming 5G networks.
So why would this new info on the existing networks NOT have been disclosed to Australia?
Call me sceptical but, if true, why not use this information in support of the trade ban last year? The Trump effect means it’s hard to know what to believe from the US at the moment.
That thought occurred to me too