In a WeChat post, China's Ministry of State Security accuses the US of hacking Huawei's servers, stealing critical data, and installing backdoors since 2009
Beijing says Washington forces tech companies to install backdoors for spying — China has accused the U.S. of hacking Huawei's servers continuously since 2009.
Nikkei Asia
Context & Ripple Effects
This accusation reverses a long-running security narrative around Huawei: U.S. officials had previously alleged that the company could covertly access global mobile networks through law-enforcement back doors, as covered in the earlier U.S. back-door allegations against Huawei.
It also fits a broader exchange of state-linked cyber accusations involving major technology systems and companies. The immediate significance is less a verified technical finding than a further hardening of competing official accounts of who compromises critical infrastructure.
First-order effects
Beijing gains a public counterargument to security concerns surrounding Huawei, while Huawei is again placed at the center of a U.S.-China cyber-security dispute.
The allegation increases scrutiny of claimed access paths, server security, and supply-chain trust for Huawei among customers and partners, even though the report describes Beijing's accusation rather than independently verified evidence.
Second-order effects
Telecom buyers and governments assessing Huawei face a more contested risk narrative: U.S. claims about Huawei's potential network access now sit alongside China's allegation of U.S. intrusion into Huawei systems.
The dispute can make technical-security assurance, auditability, and vendor provenance more central to procurement decisions, rather than resolving the underlying trust question.
Third-order effects
If reciprocal state cyber allegations continue to center on nationally important technology vendors, security assessments may increasingly split along geopolitical lines instead of converging on shared evidentiary standards.
That dynamic supports a more state-mediated technology market, in which access to networks and infrastructure is shaped as much by national-security alignment as by product capability.
The trend: This is one data point in the securitization of technology supply chains, where cyber accusations become part of the contest over trusted infrastructure vendors.
As Joe says, this was first reported in 2014. Does highlight how Beijing is now taking hold of Western governments' cyber TTPs (attribution) and turning them against their creators. https://www.nytimes.com/...
China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) released an article on Wednesday revealing that #US' infiltration of #Huawei headquarters' servers can be traced back to 2009 https://enapp.globaltimes.cn/ ...
-The US began intruding into Huawei's headquarters servers in 2009 and continues to monitor them, according to China's Ministry of National Security. -14 years later, Raimondo said she was “upset” about Huawei's new phone with advanced chips. In your face, America. [image]
The disclosures from the Chinese government of US hacking campaigns are slowly but surely becoming more specific. Personally I'd love to read about specific tactics and techniques used by US hackers, something that is rarely published https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Given how much Beijing values its self-image as a strong and sophisticated global power, it'll be interesting to see if it starts admitting more often that the U.S. government pwned it.
Exactly. It's a very interesting development. I'm curious if it will affect how freely major US technology firms reveal nation state hacking operations (who already closely collaborate with federal law enforcement and the intelligence community on these disclosures)
@joetidy @ciaranmartinoxf I don't know anyone who thinks that the West is innocent in cyber. Not supporting large scale cybercrime? Yes (hello moonlighting). Not running super irresponsible cyber ops? Maybe (hello WCry, Hafnium ProxyLogon etc.). But innocent? Hell no.
@z_edian @ciaranmartinoxf People in cyber know the truth but the general public are led to believe (thanks to western governments, cyber firms and a compliant media) that the US and allies are innocent. “We're under attack from China/ Russia” is the narrative.
China once again outing a US cyber attack. The west will laugh at this as it's an old attack but China is doing it's own thing and carefully starting to fight back on the narrative that the west is innocent in cyber. https://www.scmp.com/...