Huawei tech had 'hidden backdoors': Report
- 5 years ago
ITALY — European telecommunications giant Vodafone found some strange stuff inside its Huawei equipment several years ago, Bloomberg reports.
According to Bloomberg, Vodafone says the issues are now resolved. However, all of this certainly doesn't look good for China's tech giant.
The company is said to have found issues with tech supplied by Huawei for its business in Italy.
Citing security briefing documents by Vodafone from 2009 and 2011, Bloomberg reports, the company discovered hidden backdoors in Huawei's software. These could have given the Huawei unauthorized access to Vodafone's fixed-line network in Italy.
The European company explained it found backdoors in its optical services nodes and its broadband network gateway.
Vodafone identified 26 open bugs in Huawei's routers. Six of them were said to be "critical"' while nine were referred to as "major".
The company said Huawei needed to remove or inhibit its telnet protocol in the routers, as it was found giving unauthorized access to its Wide Area Network or WAN.
Vodafone said it asked Huawei to remove backdoors present in home routers, however they never did despite saying they would.
According to Bloomberg, a backdoor refers to a way of bypassing security measures in order to gain access to a computer system or even encrypted data.
Citing the internal Vodafone documents, Bloomberg reports this was a risk for the company as third-parties could potentially access a client's personal computer or network.
In a statement to Bloomberg, Vodafone defended Huawei saying that there wasn't any evidence of user data being compromised and said that it "couldn't find evidence of historical vulnerabilities...beyond Italy."
According to Bloomberg, Vodafone says the issues are now resolved. However, all of this certainly doesn't look good for China's tech giant.
The company is said to have found issues with tech supplied by Huawei for its business in Italy.
Citing security briefing documents by Vodafone from 2009 and 2011, Bloomberg reports, the company discovered hidden backdoors in Huawei's software. These could have given the Huawei unauthorized access to Vodafone's fixed-line network in Italy.
The European company explained it found backdoors in its optical services nodes and its broadband network gateway.
Vodafone identified 26 open bugs in Huawei's routers. Six of them were said to be "critical"' while nine were referred to as "major".
The company said Huawei needed to remove or inhibit its telnet protocol in the routers, as it was found giving unauthorized access to its Wide Area Network or WAN.
Vodafone said it asked Huawei to remove backdoors present in home routers, however they never did despite saying they would.
According to Bloomberg, a backdoor refers to a way of bypassing security measures in order to gain access to a computer system or even encrypted data.
Citing the internal Vodafone documents, Bloomberg reports this was a risk for the company as third-parties could potentially access a client's personal computer or network.
In a statement to Bloomberg, Vodafone defended Huawei saying that there wasn't any evidence of user data being compromised and said that it "couldn't find evidence of historical vulnerabilities...beyond Italy."