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Security flaws found in Xiaomi phones’ trusted environment could have affected over 1 billion users


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Team TC

12 Aug, 2022


Security researchers have found vulnerabilities in Xiaomi phones’ trusted environment, which could have affected more than a billion users. If left unpatched, they could have allowed attackers to steal private keys used to login into payment apps such as WeChat Pay, the researchers warned. 

The vulnerabilities were flagged by Cybersecurity firm Check Point Research (CPR), which said that Xiaomi acknowledged and fixed the security flaws after they were brought to its attention. 

Though CPR didn't disclose the name of the afflicted Xiaomi devices, it said that they were powered by MediaTek chips.

A trusted environment is an isolated space on a smartphone that is designed to run trusted apps with higher security and privacy demands. Most payment apps such as WeChat and Samsung Pay use this space to store tokenised information such as private keys and passwords. 

“We were able to hack into WeChat Pay and implemented a fully worked proof of concept,” Slava Makkaveev, a security researcher at CPR said in a statement. 

Makkaveev and his team, during their research, found that the vulnerabilities could have been exploited to attack the trusted code in two ways. In the first method, they installed a malicious application and used it to extract the private keys and send a fake payment packet to steal the money.

In the second method, they rooted the device to downgrade the trust environment and then ran a code to create a fake payment package without involving an application. 

“We discovered a set of vulnerabilities that could allow forging of payment packages or disabling the payment system directly, from an unprivileged Android application,” added Makkaveev. 

Makkaveev urged users to apply the latest updates and security patches released by the company. 

Though Makkaveev said that this is the first time Xiaomi's trusted applications are being reviewed for security issues, CPR has flagged vulnerabilities in Xiaomi devices in the past. For instance, in 2019, CPR found a vulnerability in a pre-installed security app called Guard Provider on Xiaomi smartphones. The network traffic of the app was found to be unsecured and vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks (MIMT).

https://www.techcircle.in/2022/08/12/security-flaws-found-in-xiaomi-phones-trusted-environment-could-have-affected-over-1-billion-users

Exclusive: Warning Over Chinese Mobile Giant Xiaomi Recording Millions Of People’s ‘Private’ Web And Phone Use

 

Apr 30, 2020,   09:25am EDT

Thomas Brewster

Forbes Staff

Senior writer at Forbes covering cybercrime, privacy and surveillance.


Commuters pass by Xiaomi Note 10 Pro smartphone advertisement at its flagship store in Hong Kong. ... [+]

BUDRUL CHUKRUT/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES


“It’s a backdoor with phone functionality,” quips Gabi Cirlig about his new Xiaomi phone. He’s only half-joking.

Cirlig is speaking with Forbes after discovering that his Redmi Note 8 smartphone was watching much of what he was doing on the phone. That data was then being sent to remote servers hosted by another Chinese tech giant, Alibaba, which were ostensibly rented by Xiaomi. 

The seasoned cybersecurity researcher found a worrying amount of his behavior was being tracked, whilst various kinds of device data were also being harvested, leaving Cirlig spooked that his identity and his private life was being exposed to the Chinese company.


When he looked around the Web on the device’s default Xiaomi browser, it recorded all the websites he visited, including search engine queries whether with Google or the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo, and every item viewed on a news feed feature of the Xiaomi software. That tracking appeared to be happening even if he used the supposedly private “incognito” mode.

The device was also recording what folders he opened and to which screens he swiped, including the status bar and the settings page. All of the data was being packaged up and sent to remote servers in Singapore and Russia, though the Web domains they hosted were registered in Beijing.

Meanwhile, at Forbes’ request, cybersecurity researcher Andrew Tierney investigated further. He also found browsers shipped by Xiaomi on Google Play—Mi Browser Pro and the Mint Browser—were collecting the same data. Together, they have more than 15 million downloads, according to Google Play statistics.

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Many more millions are likely to be affected by what Cirlig described as a serious privacy issue, though Xiaomi denied there was a problem. Valued at $50 billion, Xiaomi is one of the top four smartphone makers in the world by market share, behind Apple, Samsung and Huawei. Xiaomi’s big sell is cheap devices that have many of the same qualities as higher-end smartphones. But for customers, that low cost could come with a hefty price: their privacy.

Cirlig thinks that the problems affect many more models than the one he tested. He downloaded firmware for other Xiaomi phones—including the Xiaomi MI 10, Xiaomi Redmi K20 and Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 devices. He then confirmed they had the same browser code, leading him to suspect they had the same privacy issues.

And there appear to be issues with how Xiaomi is transferring the data to its servers. Though the Chinese company claimed the data was being encrypted when transferred in an attempt to protect user privacy, Cirlig found he was able to quickly see just what was being taken from his device by decoding a chunk of information that was hidden with a form of easily crackable encoding, known as base64. It took Cirlig just a few seconds to change the garbled data into readable chunks of information.

“My main concern for privacy is that the data sent to their servers can be very easily correlated with a specific user,” warned Cirlig.

Xiaomi’s response

In response to the findings, Xiaomi said, “The research claims are untrue,” and “Privacy and security is of top concern,” adding that it “strictly follows and is fully compliant with local laws and regulations on user data privacy matters.” But a spokesperson confirmed it was collecting browsing data, claiming the information was anonymized so wasn’t tied to any identity. They said that users had consented to such tracking. 

But, as pointed out by Cirlig and Tierney, it wasn’t just the website or Web search that was sent to the server. Xiaomi was also collecting data about the phone, including unique numbers for identifying the specific device and Android version. Cirlig said such “metadata” could “easily be correlated with an actual human behind the screen.”

Xiaomi’s spokesperson also denied that browsing data was being recorded under incognito mode. Both Cirlig and Tierney, however, found in their independent tests that their web habits were sent off to remote servers regardless of what mode the browser was set to, providing both photos and videos as proof.

When Forbes provided Xiaomi with a video made by Cirlig showing how his Google search for “porn” and a visit to the site PornHub were sent to remote servers, even when in incognito mode, the company spokesperson continued to deny that the information was being recorded. “This video shows the collection of anonymous browsing data, which is one of the most common solutions adopted by internet companies to improve the overall browser product experience through analyzing non-personally identifiable information,” they added.

Both Cirlig and Tierney said Xiaomi’s behavior was more invasive than other browsers like Google Chrome or Apple Safari. “It’s a lot worse than any of the mainstream browsers I have seen,” Tierney said. “Many of them take analytics, but it's about usage and crashing. Taking browser behavior, including URLs, without explicit consent and in private browsing mode, is about as bad as it gets.”

Cirlig also suspected that his app use was being monitored by Xiaomi, as every time he opened an app, a chunk of information would be sent to a remote server. Another researcher who’d tested Xiaomi devices, though was under an NDA to discuss the matter openly, said he’d seen the manufacturer’s phone collect such data. Xiaomi didn’t respond to questions on that issue.

‘Behavioral Analytics’

Xiaomi appears to have another reason for collecting the data: to better understand its users’ behavior. It’s using the services of a behavioral analytics company called Sensors Analytics. The Chinese startup, also known as Sensors Data, has raised $60 million since its founding in 2015, most recently taking $44 million in a round led by New York private equity firm Warburg Pincus, which also featured funding from Sequoia Capital China. As described in Pitchbook, a tracker of company funding, Sensors Analytics is a “provider of an in-depth user behavior analysis platform and professional consulting services.” Its tools help its clients in “exploring the hidden stories behind the indicators in exploring the key behaviors of different businesses.”

Both Cirlig and Tierney found their Xiaomi apps were sending data to domains that appeared to reference Sensors Analytics, including the repeated use of SA. When clicking on one of the domains, the page contained one sentence: “Sensors Analytics is ready to receive your data!”  There was an API called SensorDataAPI—an API (application programming interface) being the software that allows third parties access to app data. Xiaomi is also listed as a customer on Sensors Data’s website.

The founder and CEO of Sensors Data, Sang Wenfeng, has a long history in tracking users. At Chinese internet giant Baidu he built a big data platform for Baidu user logs, according to his company bio.

Xiaomi’s spokesperson confirmed the relationship with the startup: “While Sensors Analytics provides a data analysis solution for Xiaomi, the collected anonymous data are stored on Xiaomi's own servers and will not be shared with Sensors Analytics, or any other third-party companies.”

It’s the second time in two months that a huge Chinese tech company has been seen watching over users’ phone habits. A security app with a “private” browser made by Cheetah Mobile, a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, was seen collecting information on Web use, Wi-Fi access point names and more granular data like how a user scrolled on visited Web pages. Cheetah argued it needed to collect the information to protect users and improve their experience.

Late in his research, Cirlig also discovered that Xiaomi’s music player app on his phone was collecting information on his listening habits: what songs were played and when.

One message was clear to the researcher: when you’re listening, Xiaomi is listening, too.

UPDATE: Xiaomi posted a blog in which it delineated how and when it collects visited URLs visited by its users. Read it in full here.

The company reiterated that the data transferred from Xiaomi devices and browsers was anonymized and not attached to any identity.

On May 3, Xiaomi announced that in its next browser update, it’d allow customers to stop their visited websites being sent to the Chinese company’s servers.

The browsers will include “an option in incognito mode ... to switch on/off the aggregated data collection, in an effort to further strengthen the control we grant users over sharing their own data with Xiaomi. The software updates will be submitted to Google Play for approval within today.”

“We believe this functionality, in combination with our approach of maintaining aggregated data in non-identifiable form, goes beyond any legal requirements and demonstrates our company’s commitment to user privacy,” Xiaomi added.

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Thomas Brewster

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/04/30/exclusive-warning-over-chinese-mobile-giant-xiaomi-recording-millions-of-peoples-private-web-and-phone-use/?sh=7f94139a1b2a

Lithuanian cybersecurity agency warns against use of Chinese-made Xiaomi and Huawei phones over data privacy concerns

Xiaomi phones also carry the risk of possible restrictions on freedom of expression because apps receive updated lists of censored words and phrases and are capable of blocking them, according to investigations

The Associated Press September 22, 2021 22:17:23 IST

https://www.firstpost.com/world/lithuanian-cybersecurity-agency-warns-against-use-of-chinese-made-xiaomi-and-huawei-phones-over-data-privacy-concerns-9988301.html



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