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News website The Intercept reported on Friday
that the U.S. National Security Agency and Britain's Government
Communications Headquarters hacked into Gemalto's systems to
steal encryption keys that could unlock security settings on
billions of mobile phones.
The website cited documents provided by American whistleblower
Edward Snowden as the basis for its report.
The Japanese company began using SIM cards produced by Gemalto
in 2001, DoCoMo spokesman Takashi Itou said in an email in
response to questions from Reuters. He declined to say what
share of DoCoMo mobile phones use SIM cards supplied by the
Franco-Dutch supplier.
"We will consider any necessary steps based on the results of
our investigation," Itou said.
Gemalto said it was conducting its own investigation of the
reported hack by American and British spies that it would
announce on Wednesday.
The SIM, short for subscriber identity module, is a chip that
acts as an electronic ID for the mobile phone and makes it
identifiable to the mobile network operator.
Gemalto competes with several European and Chinese SIM card
suppliers. It produces around 2 billion SIM cards a year and
counts Verizon, AT&T Inc and Vodafone among its customers.
(Reporting by Teppei Kasai, editing by Louise Heavens)
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