Alert over Chinese smartphones that censor and spy
One of the most popular, Chinese-made, phones in the EU has been found to contain censorship software and security flaws.
Lithuania has told its civil servants to jettison their Chinese-made smartphones after experts found they contained automatic censorship software and other security flaws.
One popular handset from Xiaomi, a Chinese company that sells more smartphones in the European Union than any other manufacturer, was discovered to be capable of detecting and blanking out the terms “Free Tibet”, “democratic movement” and “Long live Taiwan’s independence”.
It was sending information about its owners’ activities, including how long they spent using different apps, to a proprietary server in Singapore, beyond the reach of the EU’s strict data laws. “These findings are worrying,” Margiris Abukevicius, the Lithuanian deputy defence minister, said. “It’s one thing to say that you don’t trust Chinese technologies, but we can put proof on the table that there are sensitive security risks in the equipment.”
The Baltic state, home to fewer than three million people, has taken a defiant stance, including establishing informal diplomatic relations with Taiwan last month. China recalled its ambassador from Lithuania and accused the government of “severely undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
It has suspended railway freight links to Lithuania and imposed a trade embargo in several sectors.
The smartphone study, published this week by the Lithuanian defence ministry’s cybersecurity centre, will add to concerns over the involvement of Chinese telecommunications companies such as Huawei in building Europe’s 5G mobile phone networks.
Abukevicius, 40, said the report would probably prompt his government to ban other Chinese-made devices from its systems, adding: “We want to ensure that our state institutions and institutions working in national security should only use trusted vendors and trusted technologies.”
The researchers analysed three best-selling devices from Xiaomi, Huawei and OnePlus, each of which has a substantial share of the EU’s smartphone sales. They found ten “instances of increased cybersecurity risk”.
The Xiaomi Mi 10T phone had a built-in blacklist of 449 Chinese phrases for political and religious groups and movements, ranging from “independence of [inner] Mongolia” to Voice of America, a US government broadcaster.
The terms could be censored on apps. The function had been switched off in the EU but could be reactivated remotely, the report said. Abukevicius said the blacklist was updated every few days.
The report also said that Huawei’s mobile app store directed users to platforms rife with fake apps that acted as a cover for viruses and spyware.
Xiaomi has yet to respond to the report.
A Huawei spokesman denied that its phones sent users’ information to third parties. No vulnerabilities were identified in the OnePlus phone.
The Times
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