I'm just estimating based on assumptions of possibilities. Even if I had evidence that Huawei has never abused their customers, and with evidence that the NSA themselves have used Huawei's accounts to abuse customers, it's still more probable that Huawei's accounts themselves are a greater threat than the NSA abusing them.
Now. Is it more likely that the NSA will abuse them? That's a completely different question. Probability describes the function of an outcome based on a set of fixed parameters; in other words, you can estimate how often a coin flipped will land heads 10 times. The likelihood, however, is based on watching it come up heads 10 times, and would describe whether the coin was rigged or not.
Based on outcomes, is it likely the NSA is spying on customers using Huawei's tech support accounts? The only outcomes we can see is one report from a guy who says he saw a Huawei tech support account exfiltrating data that an American intelligence agency would like to have. It's really not enough data to make many conclusions. The only likelihood we can determine is that Huawei accounts are used to exfiltrate data from companies that American intelligence agencies would like.
Like someone else commented (could have been the OP?) another possible actor could be a CIA mole or some bribed/corrupt employee. Could be a rival company, or someone who wants to sell the information. We don't really know. We could assume the NSA is the only organization with an interest in hacking Huawei because this is the only report we've heard about such a thing, but that's speculating about unknowns.
There's really nothing about this action that screams NSA specifically; it's just being correlated with the story because the data appears to be useful for American intelligence. To say that there is no data that could be useful to both American intelligence and other parties would probably be a stretch. The only thing we do know for sure is that Huawei's accounts were used to exfiltrate data; who wants the data, and what for, is a mystery. But what is certain is that you should be afraid of your Huawei support accounts.
"We currently have good access and so much data that we don't know what to do with it," states one internal document. As justification for targeting the company, an NSA document claims that "many of our targets communicate over Huawei produced products, we want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products."
Now. Is it more likely that the NSA will abuse them? That's a completely different question. Probability describes the function of an outcome based on a set of fixed parameters; in other words, you can estimate how often a coin flipped will land heads 10 times. The likelihood, however, is based on watching it come up heads 10 times, and would describe whether the coin was rigged or not.
Based on outcomes, is it likely the NSA is spying on customers using Huawei's tech support accounts? The only outcomes we can see is one report from a guy who says he saw a Huawei tech support account exfiltrating data that an American intelligence agency would like to have. It's really not enough data to make many conclusions. The only likelihood we can determine is that Huawei accounts are used to exfiltrate data from companies that American intelligence agencies would like.
Like someone else commented (could have been the OP?) another possible actor could be a CIA mole or some bribed/corrupt employee. Could be a rival company, or someone who wants to sell the information. We don't really know. We could assume the NSA is the only organization with an interest in hacking Huawei because this is the only report we've heard about such a thing, but that's speculating about unknowns.
There's really nothing about this action that screams NSA specifically; it's just being correlated with the story because the data appears to be useful for American intelligence. To say that there is no data that could be useful to both American intelligence and other parties would probably be a stretch. The only thing we do know for sure is that Huawei's accounts were used to exfiltrate data; who wants the data, and what for, is a mystery. But what is certain is that you should be afraid of your Huawei support accounts.