Chinese smartphone manufacturers have again been
critized for having Backdoor in their handsets. But this time a different
vendor’s name has come up. Earlier the popular Chinese smartphone brands, Star
N9500 and Xiaomi name came up but now the China’s third largest and world’s
sixth largest mobile manufacturer ‘CoolPad’, has joined the list.
Android
smartphones sold by Chinese smartphone maker Coolpad Group Ltd contains an extensive “backdoor” that is able to
track users, push unwanted pop-up advertisements and install unauthorized apps
onto users phone without their permission, alleged a U.S. security firm.
MORE
THAN 10 MILLION USERS at RISK
Researchers at Silicon Valley online security firm
Palo Alto Networks discovered the backdoor “CoolReaper”, pre installed on 24 Coolpad Android handset models,
including high end ones. The attackers can completely hijack users Android
device by gaining their device information with the help of the backdoor.
Features
of CoolReaper backdoor:
According to Ryan Olson, intelligence director at
Palo Alto, CoolReaper backdoor has ability to:
Ø Download,
install aand activate any Android application without users knowledge.
Ø Connect
to number of command and control(C&C) servers.
Ø Wipe
user data, uninstall applications or disable system applications.
Ø Send
fake software updates to devices.
Ø Send
or insert arbitrary SMS or MMS messages into the phone.
Ø Call
arbitrary phone numbers.
Ø Upload
device information including its location, application, usage information,
calling and SMS history to Coolpad servers.
On examination of Coolpad smartphone models of
different country, researchers suspected that Coolpad smartphone come pre
installed with Coolreaper backdoor on handsets which are sold exclusively in
China and Taiwan.
Coolpad is the first malware that is built and
operated by an Android manufacturer.China has been criticized many times for
its products. Six months ago another handset which was popular and also cheap,
Star N9500 smartphone came pre-installed with a Trojan that allowed
manufacturerto spy on users including personal data and conversations without
their knowledge.
Their
was another allegation against the popular Chinese smartphone manufacturer,
“Xiaomi of secretly stealing users information and sending it back to a server
in Beijing.
