Huawei executives have been criss-crossing the globe in recent weeks to reassure customers that their equipment has not been compromised, in the wake of revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden in March that the US national security agency tried to hack the Chinese telecoms equipment maker.
The Snowden revelation “does not have a big impact on our business, but [it does have] a big impact on our workload,” Eric Xu, one of three rotating chief executives at Huawei, told an analyst meeting on Wednesday. “We have to work with different stakeholders, to reassure them, and this is very tiresome work.”
Mr Xu and other Huawei executives declined to specify how they have addressed the allegations, which said that the aim of the NSA operations was both to determine Huawei’s links to China’s People’s Liberation Army and to find vulnerabilities in Huawei’s equipment that could be exploited to hack Huawei’s customers.