The United States was right: there are indeed backdoors in the Huawei hardware
For years, Huawei has been at the center of a big scandal - the US authorities claim that it works closely with the Chinese authorities and provides them with access to their users' data. It is believed that the manufacturer deliberately leaves in its network equipment and home routers loopholes for unauthorized access - recently reported the presence of their cellular operator Vodafone. Vulnerabilities were found in 2009, but Huawei did not eliminate them even after the appeal of the cellular operator.
Most of the loopholes were found in equipment designed for the Italian division of Vodafone. According to Bloomberg, the personal data of users from the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal could also be at risk. Among other vulnerabilities, experts discovered embedded telnet servers with which Huawei could gain access to devices. The company explained the presence of this vulnerability by the fact that it needs it for remote configuration of equipment.
At the same time, the company assured that other gaps were not “backdoors”, because the term itself implies their intentional embedding to obtain unauthorized access. According to Huawei, she intentionally did nothing, and technical errors were found in the Vodafone equipment that have already been fixed. Whatever it was, the company's reputation suffered great damage, and with the filing of the United States many countries, including Australia, Japan and the Czech Republic, refuse to cooperate with it.
Vodafone itself continues to cooperate, since the very fact of the compromise of personal data has not been proven. Moreover, the operator allowed Huawei to create 5G infrastructure, but only for non-particularly important parts of it. After all, the fifth generation networks will affect the areas of industry and health care, where data leakage can lead to serious consequences - caution does not hurt.
Countries such as France and Germany, in turn, take a more neutral position. They do not call to completely refuse to cooperate with Huawei, but suggest simply tightening the requirements for data networks to ensure greater security.