UPDATED 13:29 EDT / AUGUST 29 2012

NEWS

Inside Huawei’s Cyber suspicions and espionage anxieties

As cybersecurity is becoming a big concern, it is increasingly becoming a part of global politics. Amidst the era of cyber warfare, the U.S. and global theater have become more and more suspicious of China when it comes to cyberespionage and hacking. It’s may be because we have already seen so many hacks and state-sponsored attacks originating from Chinese IP addresses.

This is potentially what’s fueling much of the suspicions surrounding companies such as Huawei.

Yes, the Chinese tech giant is facing several problems these days, as U.S. House Intelligence Committee is continuously pressurizing the company to disclose details about its ties to the Chinese government. The trouble came in the form of a letter, released to the media, from the committee’s chairman and the ranking Democrat to Huawei founder and Chairman Ren Zhengfei.

United States has sent a big 11-page letter to Huawei, asking questions about everything from funding the company allegedly received from the Chinese government to queries about how board members got their posts. They were even asked if Chinese government owns or controls Huawei, and pressed to see if the Chinese government has ever pressured Huawei to seek any information on its behalf. In spite of growing business and technical prowess, and work-culture similar to a Western company, there are few things that are not working in favor of the company. May be the marriage of Huawei’s capability with the Chinese government’s motive and intent. And the founder Ren Zhengfei, who also served as a civil engineer for the People’s Liberation Army before starting Huawei. This leaves the U.S. lawmakers in doubt whether it is merely a financial success story of Huawei, and maybe its infrastructure and communications networks are a tool of the Chinese government, potentially enabling it to snoop on critical corporate and government data through digital backdoors that Huawei has the ability to install.

This may be due to the so many Chinese linkups we heard about recently. A few days back, we heard about the company allegedly involved in censoring information or monitoring and tracking users to help out the Iranian government. Defending itself, Huawei said in a statement,

“Huawei’s work in Iran is no different than our work in any other market and we are only involved in the R&D, manufacturing and sales of telecommunications equipment that is for commercial and civilian use in Iran and other markets in which we operate. We have never been involved in and do not provide any services relating to monitoring or filtering technologies and equipment anywhere in the world.”

Looks like notorious reputation of China is harming Huawei. Piecing reports together for the last 6 months, it appears that China already has formed a hacking army that wages war against other governments. In July, U.S. intelligence researchers discovered that the critical data and e-mail belonging to the president of the European Union Council, Herman Van Rompuy, were stolen by a Chinese hacker group named ‘Comment/ Byzantine Candor’. Earlier that month, malicious activities within the Indian Naval computers were traced to IP addresses from China and Chinese-codes. The severity of hacking issues has prompted U.S. President Obama to endorse Cybersecurity Bill.


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