Backdoor on 700 million android devices

[BrightBlue]

China wants to track everyone's movements :erm:

 

[JerryMungo]

Is it not possible to block this app. I have Huawei and want to 1) Find out if I am infected with this backdoor 2) Block it if I can. I am sure I can put up a firewall to block it connecting to the host or something? Does anyone have any technical information?

What I would do is firstly run packet capture on your device to see which IPs and sites are being contacted

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27887719/capture-packets-in-android

From there you can block the app from communicating out AFAIK though I've not done this myself. I'm sure someone on the XDA developers forums will know - post in there under your model. What particular model do you have? See if cyanogenmod supports it:
https://download.cyanogenmod.org/
Or see if there's details on the XDA site


I'd suggest loading a custom firmware would be one way of dealing with it - e.g. Cyanogenmod.

More resources here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/general/security/android-security-resources-learning-t3492567

 

[SynicalFox]

Google harvests all your formation anyway.
Rooting is the way to go.
Any dodgy apps will get picked up immediately. Use AF firewall.

Yeah. Google already knows a lot about me and I'm fine with that.

Problem is with these companies having backdoors and not being direct or upfront is that you don't know what they really want. Are they planning a cyber attack, a global device explosion by exploiting hardware with software control, or just purely stealing a user's personal information like banking details. They could auto install key loggers...!

 

[Thor]

Does not surprise me one bit and why isn't iPhone and Samsung also affected there is a lot of smart Chinese people I'm sure they could have infiltrated the ecosystems of the two biggest manufacturers to steal data.

 

[JerryMungo]

Add to this the possibility that entities other than the developers can access the backdoor data and you have a potentially huge problem... think vodacom / ABSA issues of late.