Xiaomi mobiles | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

EXCLUSIVE — Beware, if you are using a Xiaomi's Mi or Redmi smartphone, you should immediately update its built-in MI browser or the Mint browser available on Google Play Store for non-Xiaomi Android devices. That's because both web browser apps created by Xiaomi are vulnerable to a critical vulnerability which has not yet been patched even after being privately reported to the company, a researcher told The Hacker News. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2019-10875 and discovered by security researcher Arif Khan , is a browser address bar spoofing issue that originates because of a logical flaw in the browser's interface, allowing a malicious website to control URLs displayed in the address bar. According to the advisory, affected browsers are not properly handling the "q" query parameter in the URLs, thus fail to display the portion of an https URL before the ?q= substring in the address bar. Since the address bar of a web browser is the most r...

What could be worse than this, if the software that's meant to protect your devices leave backdoors open for hackers or turn into malware? Researchers today revealed that a security app that comes pre-installed on more than 150 million devices manufactured by Xiaomi, China's biggest and world's 4th largest smartphone company, was suffering from multiple issues that could have allowed remote hackers to compromise Xiaomi smartphones. According to CheckPoint, the reported issues resided in one of the pre-installed application called, Guard Provider , a security app developed by Xiaomi that includes three different antivirus programs packed inside it, allowing users to choose between Avast, AVL, and Tencent. Since Guard Provider has been designed to offer multiple 3rd-party programs within a single app, it uses several Software Development Kits (SDKs), which according to researchers is not a great idea because data of one SDK cannot be isolated and any issue in one of ...

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Note — Don't miss an important update at the bottom of this article, which includes an official statement from Xiaomi . Do you own an Android Smartphone from Xiaomi, HTC, Samsung, or OnePlus? If yes, then you must be aware that almost all smartphone manufacturers provide custom ROMs like CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, MIUI and others with some pre-loaded themes and applications to increase the device's performance. But do you have any idea about the pre-installed apps and services your manufacturer has installed on your device?, What are their purposes? And, Do they pose any threat to your security or privacy? With the same curiosity to find answers to these questions, a Computer Science student and security enthusiast from Netherlands who own a Xiaomi Mi4 smartphone started an investigation to know the purpose of a mysterious pre-installed app, dubbed AnalyticsCore.apk , that runs 24x7 in the background and reappeared even if you delete it. Xiaomi is one of the ...

Millions of Xiaomi smartphones are vulnerable to a dangerous remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability that could grant attackers complete control of handsets. The vulnerability, now patched, exists in MIUI – Xiaomi's own implementation of the Android operating system – in versions prior to MIUI Global Stable 7.2 which is based on Android 6.0. The flaw, discovered by IBM X-Force researcher David Kaplan, potentially allows attackers with privileged network access, such as cafe Wi-Fi, to install malware remotely on the affected devices and fully compromise them. Researchers found some apps in the analytics package in MIUI, which can be abused to provide malicious ROM updates remotely through a man-in-the-middle attack. " The vulnerability we discovered allows for a man-in-the-middle attacker to execute arbitrary code as the highly privileged Android 'system' user, " researchers say. Researchers say they discovered vulnerable analytics packages in at lea...

Recently a mobile-security firm Bluebox claimed that the brand new Xiaomi Mi4 LTE comes pre-installed with spyware /adware and a " forked " vulnerable version of Android operating system on top of it, however, the company denies the claim. Xiaomi , which is also known as Apple of China, provides an affordable and in-budget smartphones with almost all features that an excellent smartphone provides. On 5th March, when Bluebox researchers claimed to have discovered some critical flaws in Mi4 LTE smartphone, Xiaomi issued a statement to The Hacker News claiming that " There are glaring inaccuracies in the Bluebox blog post " and that they are investigating the matter. RESEARCHERS GET TROLLED BY CHINESE SELLERS Now, Xiaomi responded to Bluebox Labs by preparing a lengthy denial to their claims and said the new Mi4 smartphone purchased by Bluebox team in China (known as the birthplace of fake smartphones) was not an original Xiaomi smartphone but a coun...

Once again the very popular and the world's third largest smartphone distributor Xiaomi , which had previously been criticized for secretly stealing users' information from the device without the user's permissions, has been found spreading malware . The top selling Android smartphone in China, Xiaomi Mi4 LTE , has been found to be shipped with pre-loaded spyware/adware and a "forked," or not certified, vulnerable version of Android operating system on top of that, according to a San Francisco-based mobile-security company, Bluebox. Xiaomi, which is also known as Apple of China, provides an affordable and in-budget smartphones with almost all features that an excellent smartphone provides. Just like other Xiaomi devices, Mi4 LTE smartphone seems to attract a large number of customers with more than 25,000 units sold out in just 15 seconds on India's online retailer Flipkart . Security Researcher Andrew Blaich of Bluebox firm revealed Thursday that the brand new ...

China's number one — and the world's 3rd largest — smartphone manufacturer, Xiaomi , which is trying to make inroads into India's booming mobile phone market, was found secretly sending users' personal data , including IMEI numbers, phone numbers and text messages to the web servers back to Beijing in China. INDIA AND TAIWAN vs XIAOMI This issue raised higher concerns across many countries, proactively in India, Singapore and Taiwan. The Indian Air Force (IAF) — among the largest in the world — warned its employees and their belongings that their private information was being shipped over to servers in China, and asked them to avoid using Xiaomi smartphones due to security risk. Taiwanese Government underlined similar concerns before Xiaomi's launch in India. Xiaomi is facing an investigation in Taiwan for alleged cyber security threat, as a result of which last month the Taiwanese government decided to ban the company due to several privacy controversies. When i...

If you own a Sony smartphone either the Android 4.4.2 or 4.4.4 KitKat firmware then inadvertently you may be transmitting your data back to the servers in China, even if you haven't installed any application. Quite surprising but it's true. I know many of you haven't expected such practices from a Japanese company, but reports popping up at several forums suggest that some new Sony Xperia handsets seem to contain the Baidu spyware . MYSTERIOUS BAIDU SPYWARE About a month ago, a group of community users of Sony smartphone detected the presence of a strange folder, named " Baidu ", mysteriously appeared from among those present in various versions of Android for these handsets. The creepy part is that the folder is created automatically without the owners permission and there is no way of deleting it. Even if someone tries to remove it, it instantly reappears as well as unticking the folder from device administrator equally seems to do nothing, neither does starting t...

Chinese telecoms equipment suppliers have previously been criticized by some countries due to suspected backdoors in its products, and if United States has banned its several major government departments, including NASA, Justice and Commerce Departments, from purchasing Chinese products and computer technology, then they are not wrong at all. In the latest claim against Chinese smartphone manufacturers is the allegation that the popular Chinese smartphone brand, Xiaomi has been suspected of "secretly" stealing users' information — including SMS messages and photos —from the device without the user's permissions and sending it back to a server in Beijing, despite of turning off the data backup functions, according to Apple Insider . Security Researchers from  F-Secure Antivirus firm  has shown that the Xiaomi phones (RedMi 1S handset) send quite a lot of personal and sensitive data to " api.account.xiaomi.com "  server located in China, including follow...