Huawei’s offices in Norway

Denmark has ordered the expulsion of two employees of Huawei Technologies because their residence and work permits were not in order, after Copenhagen police carried out a routine check of the residence and work permits at Huawei’s offices. Police said the expulsion of the two Huawei employees was in no way linked to espionage concerns.

But the move came on the same day that neighboring Norway’s intelligence service issued a warning about Huawei. “One has to be attentive about Huawei as an actor and about the close connections between a commercial actor like Huawei and the Chinese regime,” the head of Norway’s domestic intelligence unit PST, Marie Benedicte Bjørnland said as she presented a national risk assessment report for 2019. PST also accused the Chinese government of stealing information from Norway’s cyber domain through technology provided by Huawei. “An actor like Huawei could be subject to influence from its home country as long as China has an intelligence law that requires private individuals, entities and companies to cooperate with China,” she said.

The Chinese Embassy in Oslo swiftly responded by saying “China poses no threat to Norway’s security”. “It’s very ridiculous for the intelligence service of a country to make security assessments and attack China with pure hypothetical language,” the Embassy said in a statement on its website. The Embassy also said China was not forcing any companies to build “mandatory back doors” in their software.

Hackers working on behalf of Chinese intelligence breached the network of Norwegian software firm Visma to steal secrets from its clients, cybersecurity researchers said. Visma, which reported global revenues of USD1.3 billion last year, provides business software products to more than 900,000 companies across Scandinavia and parts of Europe. The company’s operations and security manager, Espen Johansen, said the attack was detected shortly after the hackers accessed Visma’s systems and he was confident no client networks were accessed. Priscilla Moriuchi, Director of Strategic Threat Development at Recorded Future, said the hackers’ activity inside Visma’s network suggested they intended to infiltrate client systems in search of commercially sensitive information.

In Norway, the main telecoms operators Telenor and Telia – which chose Huawei to supply their 4G networks – are gearing up for the roll-out of 5G. “As far as we’re concerned, it’s about setting up a regulatory framework to protect what could be considered critical infrastructure,” Noregian Justice Minister Tor Mikkel Wara said at the same news conference. “What this regulatory framework would look like, and what it would cover, is what we’re working on right now,” he said. Several countries including the United States have banned Huawei 5G telecoms equipment for security reasons, on concerns its technology could be a Trojan horse for Beijing’s security apparatus. Huawei strenuously denies that its equipment could be used for espionage.

Meanwhile, Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Canada and faces possible extradition to the United States, is exploring a defense that claims U.S. charges against her are politically motivated. Meng’s lawyers are also planning to challenge whether her alleged conduct would be deemed criminal under Canadian law, the South China Morning Post reports.

The dispute between China and Canada over the arrest of Meng is also having repercussions on trade, slowing down customs clearance of canola shipments through Chinese ports and causing some importers to hesitate to buy from Canada. Customs clearance of some canola shipments took more than 20 days, about twice the usual time, as authorities carried out more thorough inspections related to GMOs. China buys about USD1.90 billion worth of Canadian canola per year, and a slower sales pace would be another hit to exporters, which include Richardson International, Viterra and Cargill. China relies on Canada to supply more than 90% of its canola imports.