China has accused the United States of hacking into Huawei’s servers since 2009, stealing critical data and gaining control over tens of thousands of devices.
The accusation comes amid escalating tensions between the two superpowers over technology, with the US seeking to know more about Huawei’s new, “made in China” chipset and China reportedly barring officials from using Apple iPhones at work.
In a post on its official WeChat account, China’s Ministry of State Security accused the U.S. government of hacking into Huawei servers through its Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO). The post said that TAO had been conducting surveillance operations on Huawei since 2009.
The ministry also said that China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center had extracted spyware called “Second Date” from Huawei’s servers. The spyware is said to be developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and operates covertly in thousands of networks around the world.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheVerge.