At a press conference on Monday, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro showed off his bold claim to Howay smartphone, where Chinese President Xi Jinping gave him talent, calling it the “best phone in the world.”
“Americans can't hack it, there's no spy plane or satellite,” Maduro said.
The phone looked like the Mate X6, a folding phone released by Huawei in 2024.
Obviously, it's not impossible to hack, and not so few by US government hackers considered the best in the world.
A US-based vulnerability researcher told TechCrunch that Huawei is creating its own hardware and its own mobile operating system (Harmonyos), making its devices easy to hack.
“There must be more errors in newer code than iOS and Android at this point,” said the researcher who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive issues.
Harmonyos, like any other software in the world, is buggy and requires regular security updates. For MATE X6, Huawei promises monthly security patches, but “the number of device models with monthly security patch updates may change. Certain carriers may only support quarterly updates.”
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In the last month alone, Huawei patched 60 bugs with Harmonyos, 13 of which were classified as “high severity” bugs.
Huawei has a page dedicated to acknowledging that malware has access to devices and helping customers who may have hacked the device.
Huawei did not respond to requests for comment.
There is a documented history of US government hackers targeting Huawei. In 2014, a leaked document by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA hacked backdoors inside China's Huawei servers to hide them. The hack was so bad that the NSA spies were able to reach Huawei's headquarters deep in Shenzhen, spying on the communications of company executives and obtaining information about the product.
According to the NSA document, “Many of our targets communicate through Huawei-Produced products.” “We want to make sure we know how to take advantage of these products,” he added to “get access to networks of interest” around the world.
It was 2014, but it is almost certain that the NSA, US Cyber Command and others have a mission to hack Huawei devices and find vulnerabilities for the purposes of espionage. There could be US government officials whose only job is hacking Huawei devices and systems. Earlier this year, the Chinese government accused the NSA of targeting China's critical infrastructure.