Vodafone denies 'backdoors' in Huawei products in Italy
Global Times
By Chen Qingqing Source:Global Times Published: 2019/4/30 18:55:40
Telecom company Huawei was made aware of historical vulnerabilities in 2011 and 2012, which had been addressed at the time, the company told the Global Times on Tuesday in response to the latest reports that the European carrier allegedly found backdoors in the Chinese company's products.
"The issues in Italy identified in the Bloomberg story were all resolved and date back to 2011 and 2012," Vodafone said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Tuesday.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Vodafone, the largest carrier in Europe, found vulnerabilities in Huawei's products in Italy, and identified hidden back-doors in the software that could have given Huawei un-authorized access to the carrier's fixed-line network there, according to the carrier's documents from 2009 to 2011.
"Software vulnerabilities are an industrywide challenge, and Huawei has a well established public notifi-cation and patching process to tackle the issue," the company's spokesperson told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Telecoms network security has been under the spot-light as the US government has been accusing Huawei, which is also a major player in global 5G roll-outs, of establishing backdoors in its equipment to gather intel-ligence for the Chinese company.
Senior executives of the Shenzhen-based firm, includ-ing Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, have repeatedly de-nied the claim, and reiterated that the company would never allow any backdoors.
The "backdoor" that Bloomberg refers to is Telnet, which is a protocol commonly used by many vendors in the industry to perform diagnostic functions. It would not have been accessible from the internet, Vodafone's statement said.
And it is also incorrect to say that this "could have giv-en Huawei unauthorized access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy," Vodafone added.
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