Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
US officials say Huawei maintains backdoors into telecom networks across the world, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The news comes after years of escalating sanctions against the company — including an executive order in May that prohibited US companies from licensing tech to Huawei — but the justifications for those sanctions have remained vague and clouded by secrecy. Now, officials are getting specific, claiming the Chinese hardware manufacturer has maintained backdoors into some of the networks it builds, starting as early as 4G equipment sold in 2009. There’s also no hard evidence of the capability, but the claims are more specific than ever, and now coming from some of the nation’s top national security…