700,000,000 Cell phone have a back door Sending Info to China

Ut oh, secret back door send info to china????? The program that runs the code is on 700,000,000 phones.

What does this really mean, and what information.

Does our govt know what is going on?

A story in the New York Times today reveals that some smartphones contain a secret backdoor that sends data to servers located in China. Pre-installed software on certain Android powered handsets kept track of where users went to, the phone calls they made and received, and the content of text messages that were sent. The number of devices possibly involved in sending this information to China is extremely high.

The company that wrote the software, Shanghai Adups Technology Company, says that its code runs on more than 700 million smart devices including phones and cars. The software reportedly

Samual Ohey-Zion said his company didn't know about the back door, and is making a patch to fix it. The software pulls text and ID's specific users.

Why are they pulling info, and what are they doing with it?

It was obviously something that we were not aware of," said BLU chief executive Samuel Ohev-Zion. "We moved very quickly to correct it." Adups' website reveals the company supplies software to manufacturers including ZTE and Huawei, two of the largest smartphone brands in the world. Both are located in China. Adups developed its monitoring systems at the request of an unnamed Chinese manufacturer that wanted to be able to store call logs and text messages to assist with customer service queries. Because the software is preinstalled on affected phones, mobile antivirus providers do not flag it as suspicious.

The firmware could identify specific users and text messages matching remotely defined keywords," said Kryptowire. "The firmware also collected and transmitted information about the use of applications installed on the monitored device, bypassed the Android permission model, executed remote commands with escalated (system) privileges, and was able to remotely reprogram the devices."
A lot of questions remain around the Adups software and how it got onto U.S. phones. The scope of the monitoring is unclear and Adups hasn't stated how many devices are running its code. Too many questions remain: is the company is using the data for tailored advertising? Is there the potential this data could be used for spying on the behalf of the Chinese government

www.digitaljournal.com...
jalvishack.wordpress.com...

a reply to: seasonal

What NYT article? I don't think the link in your link goes to it and I don't trust bloggers without proper sources much.

Even the blog's source fails to link to the NYT article unless I'm missing it.


Got it. They should have provided an original source link though.

www.nytimes.com...

Security experts frequently discover vulnerabilities in consumer electronics, but this case is exceptional. It was not a bug. Rather, Adups intentionally designed the software to help a Chinese phone manufacturer monitor user behavior, according to a document that Adups provided to explain the problem to BLU executives. That version of the software was not intended for American phones, the company said.

The Chinese company that wrote the software, Shanghai Adups Technology Company, says its code runs on more than 700 million phones, cars and other smart devices.

a reply to: seasonal

Nice find.

I hope my iPhone is not sending my text to China. They would all be laughing.

a reply to: seasonal

The actual number was much smaller, and it has already been patched. That kind of factual information would also have been posted had a real source been used instead if someone's back-alley blog.

I was and am completely aware that my Chinese brand MI android phone is back doored. Silly to assume otherwise.

Lots of kit has all sorts of crap on it that sends back and forth data to the mothership, realistically anyone in a position of any importance will have an hardened phone. This seems like it was a targeted operation to get advertising data from the Chinese customers but like a lot of things the phones probably just got sent out to whoever brought them with the standard image which included the software.

If it was a state run operation i'd of expected more subtlety from them to say the least as i'd imagine the data was pretty much sent plain text.

a reply to: Jdennis10

Mine too, kinda boring. But I don't like it.

a reply to: seasonal

All suggestions of stuff like this are probably true, and they are also a disgustingly, creepy violation of human privacy. There can be no justification for this

a reply to: seasonal

Double post

a reply to: seasonal

The only part of this I'm skeptical on is this has got to imply this has gone on for years.

ISP's and cell phone carriers would have had to notice the terabytes of data making its way to China.

originally posted by: Zcustosmorum
a reply to: seasonal

All suggestions of stuff like this are probably true, and they are also a disgustingly, creepy violation of human privacy. There can be no justification for this

But like any other addict, we will keep buying the stuff, even if we know that it is doing us harm.

a reply to: Zcustosmorum

Kind of like the NSA.

a reply to: Zcustosmorum

This is a cheaper phone here in the US, my question is how do we know when our "expensive" phone is sending info to who and why.

And can we shut it off.

All suggestions of stuff like this are probably true, and they are also a disgustingly, creepy violation of human privacy. There can be no justification for this

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Zcustosmorum

This is a cheaper phone here in the US, my question is how do we know when our "expensive" phone is sending info to who and why.

And can we shut it off.

All suggestions of stuff like this are probably true, and they are also a disgustingly, creepy violation of human privacy. There can be no justification for this

I'm no expert, just a regular guy who's incredibly creeped out by the whole illegal intelligence gathering thing

a reply to: CriticalStinker
No, all the alphabets orgs are only spying on you to help you, Silly.

Kind of like the NSA.

a reply to: seasonal

Read this in work earlier ...

www.theregister.co.uk...

a reply to: Cymru

When ever I read stories like this I realize we are screwed.

Couple this with face recognition on drivers licenses, traffic cams, black boxes in cars, gps, credit card tracking, bank cash deposit/removal reported........Screwed

a reply to: seasonal

I think I want to ditch my phone.


*hello is this working, what?

a reply to: seasonal

I just took a naked selfie. Hope China likes it.

a reply to: Jdennis10

Does apple have a 2 canner available in the pearl white finish?