Frankly, these products are likely unmaintainable long term without a total refactoring of the codebase, nevermind the abject lack of security.
The trick with these vendors is the codebase will never see serious improvement, as these basestations aren't going to be sold for the next decade, so Huawei will do the bare minimum and shelve support in short order.
Network security is piss poor, most of these vendors add vulnerabilties atop secure distros (OpenWRT, Debian, etc) and flog it as the best thing since sliced bread.
You can say that people who sell vulnerabilities to unaffiliated-seeming, neutral-seeming, innocuous-seeming brokers ought to know better where their work is going to end up, and I suppose that's true, but it's still not the same dynamic as exists with Blackwater.
But XE/Blackwater/whatever has plenty of support staff enabling operators overseas. Just because you don't carry an M4 while you cash your check from the organization doesn't mean you aren't helping them in their missions.
If you sell vulns and tools to spyware firms, you know exactly who the most likely high bidders are. It ain't the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
I'm not saying that makes it OK (I think the opposite thing, in fact, though I feel like I always need to add the disclaimer that the kinds of bugs that have commercial/operational relevance aren't the kind I develop). I'm saying that the dynamics are different than they are with Blackwater.
The vast majority of employees at these firms work for Aramark, or its equivalent.
I don't know enough about Hacking Group to know how closely they work with the people they sell to.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spyi...