Venezuela’s President Thinks American Spies Can’t Hack Huawei Phones

During a property conference connected Monday, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, showed disconnected a Huawei smartphone that China’s President Xi Jinping talented him, calling it “the champion telephone successful nan world,” and making a bold claim.

“The Americans can’t hack it, neither their spy planes, nor their satellites,” Maduro said. 

The telephone looked for illustration a Mate X6, a foldable telephone released by Huawei successful 2024. 

Obviously, thing is intolerable to hack, and moreover little truthful by U.S. authorities hackers, who are considered immoderate of nan champion successful nan world. 

A U.S. based vulnerability interrogator told TechCrunch that because Huawei makes its ain hardware, arsenic good arsenic its ain mobile operating strategy — HarmonyOS — its devices are easier to hack. 

“There’s bound to beryllium galore much mistakes successful their brand-new codification than successful iOS and Android astatine this time,” said nan researcher, who asked to stay anonymous to talk delicate issues. 

HarmonyOS, which — for illustration immoderate package successful nan world — has had bugs and needs regular information updates. In nan lawsuit of nan Mate X6, Huawei promises monthly information patches, but besides notes that “the number of instrumentality models pinch monthly information spot updates is taxable to change. Certain carriers whitethorn only support updates connected a quarterly basis.”

Last period alone, Huawei patched 60 bugs successful HarmonyOS, 13 of which were classified arsenic “high severity” bugs. 

Huawei acknowledges that malware tin get connected its devices and has a page dedicated to helping customers who whitethorn person gotten their devices hacked. 

Huawei did not respond to a petition for comment. 

There is simply a documented history of U.S. authorities hackers targeting Huawei. In 2014, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that nan NSA had hacked and hid backdoors wrong Huawei servers successful China. The hack was truthful bad that NSA spies sewage each nan measurement wrong Huawei’s office successful Shenzhen, which allowed them to spy connected institution executives’ communications, and get accusation astir its products. 

“Many of our targets pass complete Huawei-produced products,” nan NSA archive said, according to The New York Times. “We want to make judge that we cognize really to utilization these products,” it added, to “gain entree to networks of interest” astir nan world.

Even though that was successful 2014, it is almost definite that nan NSA, U.S. Cyber Command, and others person nan ngo to hack Huawei devices and find vulnerabilities successful them for espionage purposes. There are apt U.S. authorities labor whose only occupation is to hack Huawei devices and systems. Earlier this year, the Chinese authorities accused nan NSA of targeting Chinese captious infrastructure.