During a press conference on Monday, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, showed off a Huawei smartphone that China’s President Xi Jinping gifted him. He called it “the best phone in the world” and made a bold claim that “The Americans can’t hack it, neither their spy planes, nor their satellites.” The phone appeared to be a Mate X6, a foldable model released by Huawei in 2024.
However, security experts suggest that no device is truly impossible to hack, especially for highly skilled U.S. government hackers. A U.S.-based vulnerability researcher explained that because Huawei manufactures its own hardware and its own mobile operating system, HarmonyOS, its devices may actually be easier to compromise. The anonymous researcher stated, “There’s bound to be many more mistakes in their brand-new code than in iOS and Android at this time.”
Like any software, HarmonyOS has had bugs and requires regular security updates. For the Mate X6, Huawei promises monthly security patches but also notes that the number of models receiving these updates can change, and some carriers may only provide updates quarterly.
Just last month, Huawei patched 60 bugs in HarmonyOS, 13 of which were classified as high severity. The company acknowledges that malware can infect its devices and even maintains a support page dedicated to helping customers who may have been hacked. Huawei did not respond to a request for comment.
There is a well-documented history of U.S. government hackers targeting Huawei. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2014 revealed that the NSA had hacked and hidden backdoors inside Huawei servers in China. The operation was so extensive that NSA agents infiltrated Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, allowing them to monitor executives’ communications and access sensitive product information.
According to a reported NSA document, “Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products. We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products to gain access to networks of interest around the world.”
Although that specific operation occurred in 2014, it is almost certain that U.S. agencies like the NSA and Cyber Command continue to focus on finding vulnerabilities in Huawei devices for espionage purposes. It is likely there are U.S. government employees whose primary mission is to hack Huawei systems. Earlier this year, the Chinese government accused the NSA of targeting Chinese critical infrastructure.