Security News > 2020 > February > White House Claims Huawei Equipment Has Backdoor for Spying
The Chinese company Huawei can secretly tap into communications through the networking equipment it sells globally, a U.S. official charged as the White House stepped up efforts to persuade allies to ban the gear from next-generation cellular networks.
The Trump administration has been lobbying for more than a year to persuade allies to exclude Huawei equipment from their next-generation cellular networks, known as 5G. Britain and the European Union have declined to impose an outright ban, however.
London has prohibited Huawei from supplying equipment used in the core of its 5G network but not the periphery.
Independent cybersecurity experts say the intelligence services of global powers including the United States routinely exploit vulnerabilities in networking equipment - regardless of the manufacturer - for espionage purposes.
The United States and other countries require that so-called "Lawful intercept" capabilities be built into networks, though the equipment manufacturers are not supposed to have secret access to them.