US spy bureau NSA ‘hacked Huawei HQ’: China confirms Snowden leak
- Chinese State Security Ministry report acknowledges cyberattacks detailed in internal papers revealed by former contractor
- The report accuses the NSA of ‘repeated, systematic attacks’ on the telecoms giant and other targets in China and other countries
Nearly a decade after documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) hacked the servers of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, Beijing has officially acknowledged the attack.
A Ministry of State Security report published on Wednesday said the NSA, through its Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), “repeatedly carried out systematic and platform-based attacks” on China in an attempt to steal its “important data resources”.
“In 2009, the [TAO] began to hack servers at Huawei headquarters and continued to monitor them,” said the report, which was published on the ministry’s official social media platform.
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The TAO is the NSA’s cyberwarfare intelligence-gathering unit, now called Computer Network Operations. In 2013, Snowden – a former NSA contractor – released internal documents showing the agency’s targets included Huawei’s sealed headquarters in Shenzhen.
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In addition to Huawei Technologies, the ministry report listed the hacking of Northwestern Polytechnical University in September 2022 as another example of China becoming a primary target of US cyberespionage.
The release of the ministry’s report comes less than a week after the ministry said it had identified NSA operatives while investigating a recent cyberattack on Northwestern Polytechnical University, and vowed to root out all “digital spies”.
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The report – titled “Uncovering the main despicable means of cyberattacks and secret theft by US intelligence agencies” – said the NSA had built a “powerful cyberattack arsenal” to carry out surveillance and steal secrets from a number of countries.
In its report, the ministry said China’s cybersecurity agencies had identified a number of US cyberattack weapons – including Operation Telescreen’s malicious Bvp47 code, Quantum, FoxAcid and Hive – that had been used for more than 10 years against China, Russia and 45 other countries and regions.
The ministry accused the US government of using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to force companies to open back doors on their systems, citing claims in 2020 that location data company X-Mode Social was selling information to parties with close ties to US military and intelligence agencies.
The report also referred to the case of another US company, Anomaly Six, that is said to have embedded its internal tracking software development kit into numerous mobile applications, giving it access to location and other data on hundreds of millions of phones around the world.
The ministry accused the US of “coercing other countries” to join the “clean network” programme, which it said was an attempt to “eliminate Chinese companies from the international network market”.
American officials have long considered Huawei a security threat, blocking it from business deals in the US and its allies for the company could create “back doors” in its equipment for the Chinese military or intelligence agencies to steal sensitive documents and communications.
According to the Snowden documents, the NSA hack on Huawei’s headquarters was a bid to obtain information about the workings of the company’s routers and digital switches, as well as monitor top executives’ communications.
The operation, code-named Shotgiant, tried to exploit Huawei’s technology so that equipment sold to other countries – both US allies and nations that avoid buying American products – could give the NSA access to computer and telephone networks.
The NSA was also looking for links between Huawei and the Chinese military, but the documents offered no clear answers on Huawei’s relationship with the People’s Liberation Army.
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
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