Xiaomi may have pre-installed Malware on its Mi4 smartphone

According to a report, Xiaomi's top selling smartphone in China Mi 4 reportedly comes with a number of major security issues.

Bluebox, a San Francisco based mobile-security company has found that Xiomi's Mi4 smartphones includes  pre-installed malicious apps and numerous vulnerabilities. The security firm said that the Mi 4 is unsafe to use from the moment it is taken out of the box.

Besides detecting pre-loaded "suspicious apps" on the device, categorised as malware, spyware or adware, Bluebox revealed that the Mi 4 handset is vulnerable to every bug it scanned, except Heartbleed. Bluebox used several Android antivirus scanners and discovered that phone contained six suspicious apps out of which three of them were harmful enough to have a special mention.

The first one is Yt service which enables an adware known as DarthPusher, which fills the device with intrusive ads. The other two are PhoneGaurdService and AppStats. PhoneGaurd service malware is a trojan and allows your Mi 4 device to be easily hijacked while the Appstats app is a riskware that can attract more malware to the Mi 4 device.

The other problem is that Mi 4 runs a forked or not certified version of Android OS which can be huge security risk for owners making it vulnerable to host of flaws like Mastekey, FakeID and Towelroot (to know more Google it).

Bluebox has also made it clear that they did not know that the Mi 4 device they tested was a lab prototype or intended for consumer release. 

Last year Xiaomi was part of a huge controversy. The Chinese firm's smartphones were found stealing user data and sending the same to China-based servers.

Source : Toms Guide