In 2012, a congressional committee called Huawei and ZTE threatened national security, and things have deteriorated since. The United States has warned its allies not to allow the use of Huawei network equipment for building 5G networks. To date, countries such as the United States, Australia, Japan and New Zealand have banned carriers from supplying Huawei equipment. Why? Because laws in China allow the ruling communist government to demand that technology companies collect information on its behalf. Despite the denials of Huawei and its founder, the United States believes that the company's phones and equipment have a back door that sends or sends data from consumers and private companies in Beijing.
Huawei's supporters are still asking to see the evidence to support the theory that the company has designed backdoors in its phones and network equipment. And of course, Bloomberg reports that European telecommunications giant Vodafone had found such back doors in Huawei equipment in recent years. Bloomberg reviewed the 2009 and 2011 Vodafone documents and learned that Vodafone is demanding that backdoors be removed from Huawei's home Internet routers and parts of its network that transmit fiber-optic Internet data. The internal documents prepared by Vodafone and read by Bloomberg indicated that the discovered back doors could have allowed a third party to access the computer of a Vodafone customer and its home Internet network. The equipment with the vulnerabilities was intended for Italian Vodafone operations.
UPDATE: Vodafone denies the Bloomberg report and has issued the following statement: "Bloomberg is wrong to say that this" could have given Huawei unauthorized access to the carrier's landline network in Italy. In addition, we have no evidence of unauthorized access. It was simply an independent security test, initiated by Vodafone as part of our current security measures and resolved at the time by Huawei. The telecommunications company added that what Blommberg saw as a backdoor was a diagnostic tool called Telnet, used by many network equipment providers.
The documents also reveal that in 2011, Vodafone had asked Huawei to remove these backdoors found inside its equipment. Although Huawei said it solved the problem, Vodafone found that the backdoors had remained. It should be noted that there are legitimate reasons for a company to include a backdoor with its network equipment and software. A company may include one to help its developers manage the software used with the hardware. But it also leaves a vulnerability that can be used by those who have malicious intent.
Huawei is the second largest handset maker and the world's leading supplier of network equipment
Earlier this year, the US Department of Justice charged Huawei with a criminal charge for concealing goods and services that the company allegedly sold to Iran. The country is subject to international economic sanctions and the United States claims that several units of the Chinese manufacturer have been involved in bank fraud to conceal these transactions. Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the company's founder, Ren Zhengfei, has also been indicted. In addition, Huawei has been accused of stealing trade secrets from T-Mobile in a case involving the theft of coins taken from a telephone test robot called "Tappy". T-Mobile had already won $ 4.2 million from Huawei following a civil lawsuit filed following the incident.
Despite the absence of a major partnership with the United States, Huawei sold more than 200 million phones last year. According to IDC, Huawei delivered 59.1 million phones in the first quarter of this year. This places it second among Samsung's 71.9 million, but exceeds the 36.4 million iPhones that the firm estimates Apple has delivered from January to March. The company said it hoped to become the largest smartphone maker in the world by next year. It is already the world's largest supplier of network equipment.
The stakes are much higher now with the construction of 5G networks. The next generation of wireless connectivity delivers data speeds that are 10 times faster than 4G LTE. New businesses and services should see the light thanks to the fast 5G downloads. These networks must be secure.
