History repeats itself: Huawei accused of espionage against Cisco

It was when 2002 Cisco accused for the first time Huawei of an alleged infringement of intellectual property (which we told you about in a editorial past). Back then the problem was related to the theft of source codes from Cisco routers: the lawsuit ended two years later with a confidential agreement. Many years have passed since then, years in which Huawei went through several other controversies: in 2010 with Motorola, in 2014 with T-Mobile and finally in 2019 with Akhan semiconductor. Not to mention the US ban, a condition that has severely tested the company's business. Now another ugly tile is about to hit the Chinese company, with an investigation de The print which puts it back against Cisco.

The story puts a series of subterfuges implemented by Huawei against Cisco at the center of the scene. The company would put pressure on its employees to be able to carry out reverse engineering on some Cisco products. For those who do not know what it is, the reverse engineering it consists in taking an object, analyzing it and making another, the same but improved.

READ MORE:
Guess how many seconds Huawei assembles a smartphone

A new investigation against Huawei: some informants speak of the illegal acts against Cisco

Several internal informants spoke about it, some anonymous, others not. To take sides publicly is Daniele Di Salvo, Senior IP Test Design Engineer employed at the Huawei German Research Center in Munich. According to his statements regarding the investigation, some employees have been pressured by Huawei's top management to carry out these reverse engineering maneuvers on the platform Cisco NSO. Acronym for Network Service Orchestrator, used to put routers and cloud systems in communication between companies.

Following the threats of dismissal received, Daniele and the other employees would have contacted the Munich center via email to inform them of the incident. The prosecution speaks of a wall of silence by the company, which remained immobile following the complaints in question. Contacted by La Stampa, here is what was communicated:

"Huawei is committed to fully respecting the intellectual property rights of third parties. Our company has implemented an advanced compliance system, which prevents any potential misconduct by employees or partners. Huawei has zero tolerance for any illegal employee actions that may damage third party intellectual property rights. We do not hesitate to enforce all appropriate legal measures accordingly."

Even accusations of racism against Huawei employees

There are also in the middle of the investigation accusations of racism following conduct against employees of different races and creeds. Also in this case, Huawei has rejected the accusations, underlining how these arguments are subject to a corporate structure that allows workers to report any such acts. It is noted that these complaints are not handled by Huawei, however, but by external auditors to whom the company relies to ensure that there is an impartial management over the parties. The managers stated that they were unable to provide information on the alleged event, not being able to verify whether there were actually any reports on the matter or not.