During a press conference on Monday, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, showed off a Huawei smartphone that China’s President Xi Jinping gifted him, calling it “the best phone in the world,” and making a bold claim.
“The Americans can’t hack it, neither their spy planes, nor their satellites,” Maduro said.
The phone looked like a Mate X6, a foldable phone released by Huawei in 2024.
Obviously, nothing is impossible to hack, and even less so by U.S. government hackers, who are considered some of the best in the world.
A U.S. based vulnerability researcher told TechCrunch that because Huawei makes its own hardware, as well as its own mobile operating system — HarmonyOS — its devices are easier to hack.
“There’s bound to be many more mistakes in their brand-new code than in iOS and Android at this time,” said the researcher, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive issues.
HarmonyOS, which — like any software in the world — has had bugs and needs regular security updates. In the case of the Mate X6, Huawei promises monthly security patches, but also notes that “the number of device models with monthly security patch updates is subject to change. Certain carriers may only support updates on a quarterly basis.”
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Last month alone, Huawei patched 60 bugs in HarmonyOS, 13 of which were classified as “high severity” bugs.
Huawei acknowledges that malware can get on its devices and has a page dedicated to helping customers who may have gotten their devices hacked.
Huawei did not respond to a request for comment.
There is a documented history of U.S. government hackers targeting Huawei. In 2014, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had hacked and hid backdoors inside Huawei servers in China. The hack was so bad that NSA spies got all the way inside Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, which allowed them to spy on company executives’ communications, and get information about its products.
“Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products,” the NSA document said, according to The New York Times. “We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products,” it added, to “gain access to networks of interest” around the world.
Even though that was in 2014, it is almost certain that the NSA, U.S. Cyber Command, and others have the mission to hack Huawei devices and find vulnerabilities in them for espionage purposes. There are likely U.S. government employees whose only job is to hack Huawei devices and systems. Earlier this year, the Chinese government accused the NSA of targeting Chinese critical infrastructure.