In Britain the government under Prime Minister Boris Johnson is looking to include Chinese telecom giant Huawei to supply hardware and software to its new 5G network. The Trump administration is vehemently opposed, and both are engaged in a battle of wills.
The Americans may well be correct. While currently unproven, there is substantial evidence that Huawei have at best waged a systematic attempt to gain access to government secrets in the Anglosphere (USA, UK, Canada and Australia), or at worst has been able to penetrate the Top Secret telecoms networks of all four countries. From my source it is reasonable to theorise Huawei may have been able to retrieve numbers and even conversations of FBI, CIA and NSA operatives.
I have spoken to an ex-employee of an America telecoms company who claims to have discovered the hack in 2010. Huawei designed into the networking equipment protocols, that allowed a function, which could gather and transmit hacked information. Most unified threat management software is looking for external threats and internal “threats” are overlooked. It is the equivalent of installing anti-virus software on your PC and who then passes on your information to those who wish to benefit criminally.
For those of you more technically inclined, malicious microchips were deliberately designed and placed in landline and mobile phone networks. The chips where coded to create sub-interfaces to transmit and then tear down the interface and purge logs. It is a clever way of reverse hacking a telecoms network where the attack is from the inside and where the data is, as firewalls are looking for intrusion hackers and not for “safe” users from the internal network. The software creates a “portal” where is can then transmit the data to the target IP address and then close down the portal without being discovered. This way the “hack” can never be discovered.
The company allegedly behind the spying is Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, founded in 1987 by the current CEO Ren Zhengfei. He is a former engineer with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and current member of the Communist Party. All medium to large Chinese companies have a party member on their board and Chinese companies are obliged to work on behalf of the state if instructed. Not the customer, not the shareholders, the state.
Huawei strenuously deny the allegations, describing them as “unsubstantiated and defamatory”.
Certainly, the Chinese government has been accused of overt spying. In 2015 up to eighteen million employees and failed applicants of the American Federal government have had their personal details accessed by China. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) initially admitted to 4.3 million breaches but FBI Director James Comey briefed Senators in private to the full scale of the hack.
It is believed the hackers had full system administration rights to all aspects of government databases and data of staff. An OPM official remarked that the Chinese had in their possession the “keys to the kingdom.”
In the UK Huawei has been involved in the national infrastructure since 2005 with British Telecom (BT). Major concerns were raised by the security services. In 2013 under the chairmanship of Sir Malcom Rifkind a damning report from the Intelligence and Security Committee came to these catastrophic conclusions. “The Security Service had already told us in early 2008 that, theoretically, the Chinese State may be able to exploit any vulnerabilities in Huawei’s equipment in order to gain some access to the BT network, which would provide them with an attractive espionage opportunity. Furthermore, the Committee understands that the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had previously warned that if a hostile actor were to exploit such an opportunity, an attack “would be very difficult to detect or prevent and could enable the Chinese to intercept covertly or disrupt traffic passing through Huawei supplied networks””.
The net result was Britain’s highest security agency GCHQ set up the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) Oversight Board. Based in Banbury, Oxfordshire., Any piece of hardware, firmware or software is stringently tested for security and cannot transmit unauthorised data. One can only speculate on what Huawei may have accessed from the British government and intellectual property of private companies, should they have decided to use their expertise to spy.
To conclude on Huawei’s involvement alleged involvement in western countries, in 2013 Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and the NSA opined, “at a minimum, Huawei would have shared with the Chinese state intimate and extensive knowledge of the foreign telecommunications systems it is involved with. I think that goes without saying.” Asked “Does Huawei represent an unambiguous national security threat to the US and Australia?” General Hayden replied “Yes, I believe it does.””
In February 2018 the heads of all the American intelligence community including the heads of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the director of national intelligence, issued a warning for security reasons should not use Huawei and ZTE phones and kit.
Here is Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking a selfie with TV presenters using his Huawei P-20.
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