Belgium said today it was investigating suspected foreign state espionage against its main telecoms company, which is the top carrier of voice traffic in Africa and the Middle East, and a newspaper pointed the finger at the United States.
Federal prosecutors said in a statement that the former state telecoms monopoly Belgacom had filed a complaint in July about the hacking of several servers and computers. "The inquiry has shown that the hacking was only possible by an intruder with significant financial and logistic means," they said.
“This fact, combined with the technical complexity of the hacking and the scale on which it occurred, points towards international state-sponsored cyber espionage.”
The prosecutors declined to say which foreign state they suspected. Documents leaked by the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have revealed a vast National Security Agency (NSA) electronic surveillance programme that has tracked enormous quantities of both Americans' and foreigners' email and telephone data.
This has mostly been done by agreement with telecommunications or internet providers or foreign government intelligence agencies. However, the Brazilian television network Globo this month alleged that the NSA had tapped into the computer systems of companies including Google and the Brazilian state oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro, as well as France's foreign ministry and the Belgian-based international banking cooperative SWIFT, which handles international financial transactions.
The Belgian daily De Standaard said the NSA had been monitoring international telephone traffic through Belgacom for two years.
It said the hackers had been primarily interested in Belgacom’s subsidiary BICS, a wholesale provider of international phone lines and biggest voice carrier in Africa and the Middle East.