Beware of Chinese apps on Android phones

admin

Administrator
There is a reason why Huawei was banned, most of these generic android phones from china come with a lot of bloatware installed, the malware threat on these phones is becoming a systemic threat.


Google says it has suspended the app for the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo after malware was found in versions of the software. The move comes just weeks after Chinese security researchers published an analysis suggesting the popular e-commerce app sought to seize total control over affected devices by exploiting multiple security vulnerabilities in a variety of Android-based smartphones.

In November 2022, researchers at Google’s Project Zero warned about active attacks on Samsung mobile phones which chained together three security vulnerabilities that Samsung patched in March 2021, and which would have allowed an app to add or read any files on the device.

Google said it believes the exploit chain for Samsung devices belonged to a “commercial surveillance vendor,” without elaborating further. The highly technical writeup also did not name the malicious app in question.

On Feb. 28, 2023, researchers at the Chinese security firm DarkNavy published a blog post purporting to show evidence that a major Chinese ecommerce company’s app was using this same three-exploit chain to read user data stored by other apps on the affected device, and to make its app nearly impossible to remove.


The three Samsung exploits that DarkNavy says were used by the malicious app. In November 2022, Google documented these three same vulnerabilities being used together to compromise Samsung devices.

 

CurrentThing

New Lister
Chinese apps have a history of malicious activity. Even the well known wechat back in the day when it was a desktop app, it would scan all other apps running on someone's computer to look for competitor apps.

At some point in time it was discovered tiktok also scans user devices to see what apps are running
 

C w kingori

Lister
There is a reason why Huawei was banned, most of these generic android phones from china come with a lot of bloatware installed, the malware threat on these phones is becoming a systemic threat.


Google says it has suspended the app for the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo after malware was found in versions of the software. The move comes just weeks after Chinese security researchers published an analysis suggesting the popular e-commerce app sought to seize total control over affected devices by exploiting multiple security vulnerabilities in a variety of Android-based smartphones.

In November 2022, researchers at Google’s Project Zero warned about active attacks on Samsung mobile phones which chained together three security vulnerabilities that Samsung patched in March 2021, and which would have allowed an app to add or read any files on the device.

Google said it believes the exploit chain for Samsung devices belonged to a “commercial surveillance vendor,” without elaborating further. The highly technical writeup also did not name the malicious app in question.

On Feb. 28, 2023, researchers at the Chinese security firm DarkNavy published a blog post purporting to show evidence that a major Chinese ecommerce company’s app was using this same three-exploit chain to read user data stored by other apps on the affected device, and to make its app nearly impossible to remove.


The three Samsung exploits that DarkNavy says were used by the malicious app. In November 2022, Google documented these three same vulnerabilities being used together to compromise Samsung devices.

Noted
 
Top