A news post published in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) states that Huawei with the help of Chinese intelligence has helped two South African politicians to spy on their opponents to steal their campaign’s data secrets and whereabouts.
Officials from Huawei have rejected the claims made by the WSJ and said that it was the work of some criminals from the west who were behind tarnishing the image of the 5G network vendor.
However, a source from the Huawei said that a team of experts from the company has indeed indulged in a secret program where politicians from Uganda and Zambia were assisted in hacking and monitoring targets for reasons.
Details on whether the targets only using Huawei devices were spied or even others were included in the program is yet to be confirmed.
Getting deep into the Huawei data scandal, Cybersecurity Insiders has learned that the Chinese vendor has helped the country’s Cyber-surveillance unit hack into the WhatsApp app of Bobi Wine, political opponents to President Yoweri Museveni. All the spying was reportedly done by the malware supplied by an Israeli firm.
In another case, phones and social media accounts of opponents belonging to Zambia President Edgar Lungu were also hacked by the employees of the networking equipment supplier using Pegasus software supplied by Israel’s NSO Group Technologies.
Note- Huawei supplied equipment has been banned from being used in Federal organizations of the US, Japan, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. However, despite knowing the cyber threat intensity, the government of the UK has decided to hand over the project of revamping Britain’s mobile network with 5G to Huawei.
