NSA infiltrated Huawei's servers, monitored execs

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has infiltrated servers in the headquarters of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co, obtaining sensitive information and monitoring the communications of top executives, the New York Times (NYT) reported on Saturday.

"If the actions in the report are true, Huawei condemns such activities that invaded and infiltrated into our internal corporate network and monitored our communications," the company said in a statement e-mailed to the Global Times Sunday.

Huawai said the company is willing to work with all governments "to jointly address the global challenge of network security."

Fang Xingdong, founder of Beijing-based industry consultancy Internet Laboratory, said on his Sina Weibo Sunday that Huawei is the victim and it is unfair for the US to monitor companies, especially those from other countries by using the power of the state.

The newspaper said its report on the operation, code-named "Shotgiant," was based on NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden, the former agency contractor who since last year has leaked data revealing sweeping US surveillance activities. German magazine Der Spiegel also reported on the documents. China's Xinhua News Agency did not have reports related to this.

One of the goals of the operation was to find any connections between Huawei and the Chinese People's Liberation Army, according to a 2010 document cited by the NYT.

But the newspaper said the operation also sought to exploit Huawei's technology. It reported that the NSA aimed to conduct surveillance through computer and telephone networks Huawei sold to other nations. If ordered by the US president, the NSA also planned to unleash offensive cyber operations, it said.

Huawei is one of the world's leading network equipment providers and is the world's third-largest smartphone vendor by shipment.

The newspaper said the NSA secured access to the servers in Huawei's headquarters in Shenzhen and got information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches. The NSA also tracked the communications of Huawei's top executives, the NYT reported.

Der Spiegel reported that the NSA breached Huawei's computer network and copied a list of more than 1,400 clients and internal training documents for engineers. "We have access to so much data that we don't know what to do with it," the magazine cited an NSA document as saying.

Huawei has long been seen by Washington as a potential Trojan Horse due to perceived close links to the Chinese government, which it denies.