Tapping and self-destruction
The update introduced malicious code that provided the affected equipment with wiretapping functionality. Bloomberg wrote that communications that passed through the systems were recorded and sent to China. The blade used had a self-destruct mechanism that became active after a few days and removed the wiretapping functionality.
According to Bloomberg’s anonymous sources, Australian intelligence agencies eventually determined that Chinese spy services were behind this act. Huawei’s workforce infiltrated the telecom engineering technician level, allowing a covert payload to be updated to telecom systems.
Not only anonymous sources
After Australia reported this to the United States in 2012, US intelligence agencies were said to have uncovered another similar attack in the same year. It was targeting Huawei equipment in the US, according to some anonymous sources to Bloomberg. These are many of the former US government employees in the field of national security.
A former employee of the US Department of Defense under the Obama administration confirmed to Bloomberg “on the record” the existence of a fraudulent software update to Huawei. It is said that the evidence for this secret hack of Huawei communications equipment has been shown behind closed doors to leaders of other countries. It is not known when and which countries were involved.
Intent, Offense, Snowden
Huawei itself responds to Bloomberg in the negative. The head of cybersecurity John Suffolk of the Chinese company said that no concrete evidence of willful misconduct was presented. Huawei may have been abused by its own government, as previously suggested by US telecommunications and technology giants such as AT&T, Cisco, Juniper and many others, including Edward Snowden, a whistleblower from the National Security Agency. Huawei itself could have been the target of hacking.
