|
BERLIN—The U.S. National Security Agency allegedly spied on Chinese technology company Huawei Technologies Co. in early 2009 and targeted Chinese officials including former President Hu Jintao, according to German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel.
The allegations were contained in pre-released extracts of an article from next week’s edition, citing documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Aside from Mr. Hu, other NSA targets in China included the Chinese Trade Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and unidentified banks, Der Spiegel reported. In the extracts, Der Spiegel didn’t elaborate on the alleged spying on the officials.
Referring to a top-secret NSA presentation, the magazine said the NSA accessed the Chinese network equipment supplier’s email archive, including Huawei Chief Executive Ren Zhengfei’s messages.
The NSA also accessed the secret source code for certain Huawei products, the presentation reportedly said. The NSA’s operations against Huawei, called Shotgiant, were conducted with involvement from the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Der Spiegel added.
The White House on Saturday didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the Spiegel article.
A spokesman for Huawei said if the reports are accurate, the company condemns the infiltration of its internal networks and calls for a cooperative approach to security.
"We reiterate that Huawei disagrees with all activities that threaten the security of networks and is willing to work with all governments, industry stakeholders and customers, in an open and transparent manner, to jointly address the global challenge of network security," said the spokesman, Scott Sykes.
China’s foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Der Spiegel is one of a small number of international media outlets that have reviewed documents they say have been leaked by Mr. Snowden, and they have published articles on the revelations since mid-2013.
The German news weekly said U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden declined to comment on specific collection activities or about intelligence operations on specific foreign countries, but told the magazine "We do not give intelligence we collect to U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line."
Der Spiegel quoted an internal NSA document as saying "We currently have good access and so much data [about Huawei] that we don’t know what to do with it." A special unit of the U.S. intelligence agency infiltrated Huawei’s network and copied a list of 1,400 customers and internal documents, the magazine says.
According to Der Spiegel, an NSA document said that since "many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products, we want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products."
Two years after the start of the alleged NSA spying, in 2011, the U.S. excluded Huawei, which competes with Cisco Systems CSCO -0.32% and Juniper Networks, JNPR -0.50%from taking part in the building of a U.S. wireless network for emergency responders, citing national security concerns.
—Paul Mozur in Beijing contributed to this article.
|
