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Suspicion of installing a new backdoor in Huawei is being raised. California-based IT firm Business Efficiency Solutions (BES) claims that Huawei installed a backdoor in the software when it developed software for local police in a project with the Pakistani government that it worked with in 2016.
The software in question was developed in 2016 in a $150 million project for the Punjab Police Unified Communications Center PPIC3 led by Huawei Technologies and led by the Punjab Province of Pakistan. It offers eight key functions, including government agency data collection and access control to buildings, social media monitoring and drone management.
However, on August 11, BES filed a complaint with a California federal court that Huawei Technologies had installed a backdoor into its software to obtain confidential information important to Pakistan’s national security. According to BES’s claim, Huawei initially requested cooperation from BES because it did not have the technology to meet the specifications contained in the Pakistani government’s Request for Proposal (RFP), and Pakistan was also evaluating it.
BES developed the underlying software, including information such as code and blueprints, which were confidential to its company, and Huawei demanded that the software be handed over to China for testing. Some of the materials submitted as evidence included an email requesting that BES founder and CEO Javed Nawaz obtain written approval from PPIC3 on March 28, 2017 for sending Huawei sensitive data to China. have.
However, there was a response e-mail saying that Huawei had obtained approval from the Pakistani government, but that it was not necessary. Moreover, as a result of the demand with the threat of canceling the contract and not paying everything if not complying with the request, BES had no choice but to admit to installing the system in China.
However, according to reports, Huawei not only did not pay BES after the installation of the system in China, but also tried to settle software development contracts with places such as Qatar, Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan without BES. In addition, BES claims that it changed some BES software and added a backdoor to Pakistani software in China, which collected and made available sensitive data related to China’s national security and personal information of Pakistani citizens.
The BES lawsuit, reported on April 8, 2019, is a past case, and the reason the Punjab government agency PSCA instructed Huawei to remove Wi-Fi cards from Pakistan’s CCTV systems is a secret backdoor that monitors Pakistani citizens to collect information remotely. This is because it was set up to do so. A Huawei representative at the time claimed that this was a misunderstanding. In addition, in the documents submitted by BES, the U.S. Department of Justice in 2019 and 2020 pointed out lawsuits about Huawei trade secrets.
Meanwhile, the report states that there is no evidence that Huawei has installed a backdoor in any product. Although it admitted that the BES system was installed in Korea, it was claimed that it was for testing physically isolated from other networks and that customer data could not be obtained. The project manager also said there is currently no evidence that the data was stolen. This case is undoubtedly a case in which Huawei continues to receive attention as to whether it is collaborating with China in intelligence gathering, but conclusive evidence has yet to come out. Related information can be found here.
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