Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Network Security

Huawei Lashes Out at ex-CIA Chief Over Spying Claims

BEIJING – Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has hit back at allegations by a former CIA chief that the company spies for Beijing, labeling them “defamatory” and “baseless”.

BEIJING – Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has hit back at allegations by a former CIA chief that the company spies for Beijing, labeling them “defamatory” and “baseless”.

Michael Hayden, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency in 2006-09, was quoted two weeks ago as saying China was engaged in unrestricted espionage against the West and that Huawei would have shared information with state agencies.

Asked by the Australian Financial Review if Huawei posed an unambiguous national security threat to the United States and Australia, Hayden said: “Yes, I believe it does.”

Eric Xu, Huawei’s deputy chairman and one of its three rotating CEOs, riposted that Hayden had no evidence for his allegations.

“Mr Hayden’s proactive comments on Huawei in his recent interview with the AFR are defamatory,” Xu said in a statement sent to AFP Friday.

“The fact is that his allegation against Huawei is baseless and he is trying to cover the fact that he doesn’t have any proof.”

Hayden, a retired general, said he believed Western intelligence networks had hard evidence that Huawei had spied on behalf of Beijing.

“That’s my professional judgement,” he told the paper.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Washington, Canberra and London, among others, have raised concerns that Huawei’s alleged ties to the Chinese state could see telecoms equipment supplied by the company used for spying and cyber-attacks.

One writer on ForeignPolicy.com characterised the accusations as “allegations that it’s basically an intelligence agency masquerading as a tech business”.

Huawei denies it has any direct links to the Chinese state, but the US Congress last year called for its exclusion from US government contracts. It was also barred from bidding for contracts to build Australia’s national broadband network.

Hayden also claimed that Huawei had approached him several years ago to be on its US board, but that it had failed to convince him it should be involved in critical communications infrastructure.

Xu also took issue with that statement, saying the company did not contact Hayden for a possible board position.

RelatedHuawei Founder Breaks Silence to Reject Security Concerns

RelatedPLA Concerns Lead to Huawei Being Blocked in Australia 

RelatedHuawei Calls for Global Security Standards

RelatedChina’s Huawei Responds to US Hackers

Related: China’s Huawei to Curb Business In Iran

 

Insight: A Convenient Scapegoat – Why All Cyber Attacks Originate in China

Written By

AFP 2023

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Identity & Access

Zero trust is not a replacement for identity and access management (IAM), but is the extension of IAM principles from people to everyone and...

Malware & Threats

The NSA and FBI warn that a Chinese state-sponsored APT called BlackTech is hacking into network edge devices and using firmware implants to silently...

Cybersecurity Funding

Network security provider Corsa Security last week announced that it has raised $10 million from Roadmap Capital. To date, the company has raised $50...

Network Security

Attack surface management is nothing short of a complete methodology for providing effective cybersecurity. It doesn’t seek to protect everything, but concentrates on areas...

Application Security

Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine...

Identity & Access

Hackers rarely hack in anymore. They log in using stolen, weak, default, or otherwise compromised credentials. That’s why it’s so critical to break the...

Application Security

Fortinet on Monday issued an emergency patch to cover a severe vulnerability in its FortiOS SSL-VPN product, warning that hackers have already exploited the...

Cyberwarfare

Websites of German airports, administration bodies and banks were hit by DDoS attacks attributed to Russian hacker group Killnet