Business Efficiency Solutions, a US-based small contractor, alleged in a lawsuit filed in federal court in California that Huawei Technologies Co. stole trade secrets and used them to spy on Pakistan.
The company said Huawei directed it to create a local system in China as that would allow it to get its hands on sensitive information about government officials and citizens in Lahore.
This could be achieved through access to a safe cities monitoring project.
In the lawsuit, BES said Huawei’s alleged backdoor is in a database that consolidates sensitive information. This also included national identity cards, alien registrations, tax registers and criminal records for law enforcement purposes.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Huawei-China is using the proprietary DES (Data Exchange System) system as its back door
China to Lahore to gain access, manipulate and extract sensitive data important to Pakistan’s national security. “
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The California-based software company said that after Huawei installed the DES in Lahore in 2017, it requested that it install a duplicate DES in Suzhou, China.
BES said it would give Huawei direct access to the data collected in Pakistan.
Muhammad Kamran Khan, chief operating officer of the Punjab Safe Cities Authority, which oversees the Lahore project, said they have started investigating BES’s allegations.
He was quoted by the WSJ as saying, “Our team is investigating the allegations and has requested a statement from Huawei. We also conducted a data security review on Huawei following this issue. So far there has been no evidence of data theft.” from Huawei “.
However, a Huawei spokesperson said the company is not commenting on ongoing legal cases. According to the WSJ, she said, “Huawei respects the intellectual property of others, and there is no evidence that Huawei ever built a back door into our products.”
