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NSA Hacked Huawei, Stole Source Code

Posted by timothy on from the whose-line-is-it-anyway dept.

Charliemopps (1157495) writes "New documents from Snowden indicate that the NSA hacked into and stole documents, including source code, from the Chinese networking firm Huawei. Ironically, this is the same firm that the U.S. government has argued in the past was a threat due to China's possible use of the same sort of attacks."

18 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. No irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's probably how the US govt knows Huawei is a threat...

    1. Re:No irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The US Gov has never articulated exactly how Huawei is a threat with any specificity. The NSA slides don't give any information either. Nothing released to the public has shown that Huawei was ever guilty of any of the things said about them, but on the other hand, the US Gov itself is guilty as hell as far as engaging in the sort of tactics we've accused Huawei of.

    2. Re:No irony by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      and the rest of the world is learning how untrustworthy the USA is.

      Which country of any consequence is trustworthy? Russia? China? In the EU, Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, etc. don't exactly have spotless histories. Anyone in South or Central America?

      Places like Denmark, Iceland and New Zealand seem to be pretty trustworthy to me. But for some reason this just doesn't scale very well. From what I can see, and I very well may be wrong, there is some kind of tipping point when a country's population crosses over the 10-20 million mark. Obviously there are exceptions. Perhaps government simply gets too large to manage at that point and it is no longer possible to maintain oversight on everything.

    3. Re:No irony by erikkemperman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nope. Most of the rest if the world is dirt poor, and yet many of these dirt poor folks have the common sense to understand that this is not entirely unrelated to the West being filthy rich. Wealth distribution is pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect looking at natural resource distribution.

      Similarly, even though we in the privileged comfort of our Western sofas like to pretend we're mostly a force for Good in the world, those at the receiving end somehow tend to remember who is propping up the violent and corrupt regimes whose boot rests on their faces.

      --
      Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
    4. Re:No irony by erikkemperman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      UM, does anyone else feel like saying F--- Snowden at this point?

      Free Snowden? Yeah I'll second that.

      --
      Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
  2. Personal Liberty! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wait,... isn't this the purpose of the NSA?

    1. Re:Personal Liberty! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wait,... isn't this the purpose of the NSA?

      Yep, if Snowden continues along this path he is moving into 'Traitor" territory. I only support him because he releases information on Domestic spying - this is completely within the realm of a FIA.

    2. Re:Personal Liberty! by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Informative

      Snowden isn't releasing anything. He just dumped what he had on some journalists; they are the ones doing these slow staged releases.

    3. Re:Personal Liberty! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Y'know what? Fuck you. This whole 'outrage over domenstic activity, but foreign-spying is a-ok' attitude has got to stop.

      I'm not American. The notion a foreign power can root through my data, without my or my governments consent, with no repercussions and the full support of people like you, is abhorrent to me.

      Traitor? The man becomes more of a hero with every tidbit like this he releases. A Hero to the rest of us. Because you no longer count.

    4. Re:Personal Liberty! by jma05 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is the most BS I have seen in this article. I almost want to think you get paid for this.

      > In this case to the benefit of China.

      The point of the article is not whether it benefits China. The point is that US has been accusing other countries of doing things that it itself does many times over... things that it implied that it would find so abhorrent that it would never consider doing. This news would have been a lot less depressing if it was found that China broke into Cisco... because China does not lecture the world on digital principles.

      As a non-american, I actually want US to be the bearer of high values in cyber space so that we have someone to point to and say - that is how things are supposed to be done. It has been incredibly disappointing to follow these revelations. Fortunately, the US tech community still holds high values, even if the corporates clearly don't.

      The case of Huawei isn't just about China. It's products are used the world over. Attacking them is an attack on the communications of the world in general, not an attack on someone you can conveniently label as a communist enemy. There is no cold war here.

      > Snowden claimed to be an expert about China and espionage. When do you think we'll see some information about that?

      Snowden is a counter-intel guy on China. He does not have policy documents on China. Why is this even hard for you to grasp?
      What you are demanding is like China asking when Ai Weiwei and Chen Guangcheng will criticize US, rather than just China. That's not their responsibility.

      > Or will the trend of only releasing information the compromises intelligence methods and activities of the US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and their allies continue?

      First, he can only disclose what he had direct access to. If you want China docs, get a Chinese whistleblower.

      Second, none of the disclosures are considered “methods”. The journalists have been cautious to not disclose them.

      > He is indeed the rarest of "patriots," exposing only the intelligence plans of his own country and its allies, and not those of its adversaries.

      Please provide a list of these non-rare patriots that expose intelligence plans on both sides.

  3. NSA validated in their concerns? by saps1e · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So if they have access to the source code, does this mean that the NSA is speaking authoritatively when they say Huawei's routers do have backdoors for the Chinese govt?

  4. Re:Good for NSA by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No. Huawei is a commercial company. Not a government.

    This is our government engaging in corporate espionage.

  5. Re:Retaliation is fair game by YukariHirai · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Merely fighting against America does not necessarily make them bad guys, in a reasonably objective sense. If you are American, then anyone fighting against you would seem to be bad guys from your point of view, but from an outsider's point of view, it's just "these guys" and "these other guys".

    Some might argue that them hacking makes them bad guys by some measure, but the US has been doing the same thing, so I'd consider that inconclusive at best and hypocrisy at worst. Others might argue that the stuff done to Americans during the Vietnam War makes them bad guys, but given everything done by the Americans during the Vietnam War... well, same conclusion.

    With that said of course, the Chinese government has had a history of doing some very shitty things to a lot of people. On the other hand, so has the US government...

  6. Re:Good for NSA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess you missed the part where it's in China. Communist/fascist regimes don't have distinctions like that.

    Neither do US corporations either... Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, RSA & others all collect data for the NSA.

  7. Re:Wow !! by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Funny

    Huawei so serious?

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  8. Re:Good for NSA by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's what they were paid for. Good job, NSA.

    Except that they just undermined their government's protests and Chinese hacking. Unlike US allegations against China which are pretty thin the Chinese now have concrete evidence of international law-breaking and industrial espionage against them. Expect it to be used against the US at the WTO and whenever the US tries to make any complaints about hacking in the future.

    It will be interesting to see how the US government tries to spin this. They said in the past that hacking could be considered an act of war, retaliated against with conventional weapons as well as cyberattacks. It's pretty much open season on the US now, and you can expect to see virus attacks on US infrastructure in the future. All thanks to the NSA.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  9. Re:Good for NSA by ark1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It will be interesting to see how the US government tries to spin this.

    "It was not theft, it was copyright infringement."

  10. Act of war... according to US by jma05 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > Wait,... isn't this the purpose of the NSA?

    According to US government, hacking communication infrastructure of a country by another government is an "act of war", not regular espionage. They said this very loudly just before Snowden revelations began. So NO. They are not supposed to be doing that.