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China Accuses US of Hacking Huawei Servers as Far Back as 2009 (time.com) 29

China accused the U.S. of infiltrating Huawei servers beginning in 2009, part of a broad-based effort to steal data that culminated in tens of thousands of cyber-attacks against Chinese targets last year. From a report: The Tailored Access Operations unit of the National Security Agency carried out the attacks in 2009, which then continuously monitored the servers, China's Ministry of State Security said in a post on its official WeChat account on Wednesday. It didn't provide details of attacks since 2009. Cyberattacks are a point of tension between Washington and Beijing, which has accused its political rival of orchestrating attacks against Chinese targets ever since Edward Snowden made explosive allegations about U.S. spying. Washington and cybersecurity researchers have said the Asian country has sponsored attacks against the West.

The ministry's accusations emerged as the two countries battle for technological supremacy. Huawei in particular has spurred alarm in Washington since the telecom leader unveiled a smartphone powered by an advanced chip it designed, which was made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. That's in spite of years-long U.S. sanctions intended to cut Huawei off from the American technology it needs to design sophisticated chips and phones. The U.S. has been "over-stretching" the concept of national security with its clampdown on Chinese enterprises, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. "What we want to tell the US is that suppression and containing of China will not stop China's development. It will only make us more resolved in our development," Mao said.

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China Accuses US of Hacking Huawei Servers as Far Back as 2009

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  • by dbialac ( 320955 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @11:25AM (#63863166)
    much to the surprise of no one.
  • Just remember that Huawei hacked Nortel first....US probably just had to reversed the connection on them.
    • No it wasn't, it was just allegations, but in reality they had to blame somebody for the downfall, other then just admitting it was due to mismanagement. No real proof was given.
  • by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @11:44AM (#63863202)

    My guess is that NSA monitoring turned up some reasons for the US to sanction Huawei back in 2019, and also why the US telcos were ordered to "rip and replace" any Huawei equipment they had installed. Probably riddled with backdoors.

    meanwhile;
    "The U.S. finds no evidence that the Chinese smartphone and telecom giant Huawei can produce smartphones with advanced semiconductors at scale, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Tuesday."
    https://techcrunch.com/2023/09... [techcrunch.com]

    • No, the US wanted the huawei hardware gone because it DIDN'T have any backdoors and was pretty secure, which was problematic because the US had trouble hacking these, and couldn't spy as easily on its own citizens and companies nor could it spy easily on its allies.
      • the US wanted the huawei hardware gone because it DIDN'T have any backdoors

        Is there evidence of this claim or is this also just allegations? Specifically that huawei hardware contained no backdoors for anyone, US or China included and that is what led to it's ban.

        • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

          I suspect that jack smirking reven was pointing out that this could go either way, and that we don't really know. There's probably not public evidence of either claim at this point. It could be both! The US government and the Chinese government have spy agencies that could do stuff like that.

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          I've never seen any actual evidence that Huawei hardware had backdoors. Cisco has gotten caught with backdoors multiple times though, the NSA has gotten caught intercepting and installing monitoring chips on US hardware enroute to customers, and the CIA has gotten caught setting up whole foreign companies to sell compromised gear. And there's this [theintercept.com] of course.

          If Huawei stuff has backdoors apparently they're way better at it than the NSA. Even if they do, it stands to reason that the US would want people using

          • Sure I am not saying it definitely is not the case but a pretty strong, assertive claim was made about US intentional actions, how do we back that up or is it speculation?

            I also can't blame Cisco necessarily for the NSA intercept program, I don't think any manufacturer can do much when a state security agency gets physical access to your gear. Ill have to look into whether the other Cisco backdoors are intentional state actions or just general security sloppiness on their part.

            At the end of the day though

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The reason they don't like Huawei is that they make good products at competitive prices.

          • I've never seen any actual evidence that Huawei hardware had backdoors.

            The information is said to have come from australia in 2012 https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/ch... [bnnbloomberg.ca] (canadian edition of bloomberg as it isn't paywalled).

            • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              Sure, but no actual evidence. Just "the Australians said there was a bad software update. Oh, and it deleted itself." The claim is that China infiltrated operatives into Huawei, which maybe they did, but that's not really anything that's not going to happen with any other equipment manufacturer. Or the courier that delivers the stuff.

              Then there are claims like "Huawei’s software updates can push whatever code they want into those machines, whenever they want, without anyone knowing" from the US which

        • I will expect Huawei to make the devices as secure as possible.

          Cos you can expect substantial interest in digging thru the device to check for backdoor. I assume US, UK, others spend alot of resources on that.

          As long as no backdoors are found, they can always say they(Huawei) do not have backdoors and most of the Western world is just bullying them and are afraid they will get bigger then their own companies.

          If even one is found, they will forever be tarred as the company that sells gear with backdoors for

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by jonadab ( 583620 )
        > No, the US wanted the huawei hardware gone because it
        > DIDN'T have any backdoors and was pretty secure

        Pfft. This is Huawei we're talking about. The company was founded by and is owned and operated by the most Orwellian surveillance state in the history of humanity. The CCP is literally *more* Orwellian than the fictional surveillance state depicted in 1984. And you think they did NOT put backdoors in?

        Also, if we go by modus operandi, then the fact that Chinese state-run media is accusing the US
  • When they tried to install their rootkit, they found that someone got there first.

  • The difficulty China has with competing in semiconductors is access to the latest process equipment from ASML. We assume that without ASML equipment, China will never catch up. So far, that's worked. If they figured out what ASML knows, I don't know if they could engineer their own process equipment, but they'll try.
  • They hacked the Abacus in the Han Dynasty, 300 years after the Greeks and others had prototypes,
  • probably payback for bloomberg article that was true

  • It doesn't count if WE do it!

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