At least one manufacturer of smartphones sold in the United States has serious security issues, according to US authorities.
BLU Products, one of the companies that sells Android smartphones in the United States and some other South American countries, has apparently shipped about 120,000 devices that are likely sending text messages (and not only) to China.
Security researchers recently discovered a backdoor in the form of pre-installed software that tracks the geographical location of the smartphone user, as well as all their conversations, including text messages.
The software then sends all the information to China every 72 hours. The secret software has been developed by a Chinese company called Shanghai Adups Technology and, according to researchers, runs on more than 700 million mobile phones worldwide.
So, the problem does not appear to be limited to the 120,000 Android smartphones released by BLU Products in the United States.
Additionally, the security firm that found the backdoor (Kryptowire) claims that Adups' software transmits the full contents of text messages, contact lists, call logs, geolocation information and other data to a Chinese server, according to the New York Times.
According to developers at Adups, the software is designed to help Chinese phone makers monitor user behavior. The company also claims that the version of the software found on BLU mobile devices was not intended for the US market.
Meanwhile, BLU Products secretly removed the software from its smartphone, as soon as they were notified by security researchers.
According to BLU head Samuel Ohev-Zion, the presence of the backdoor was something they were unaware of, which is why they removed it immediately upon learning about it.
It is also worth noting that the Chinese company Adups provides software to much larger mobile phone manufacturers, such as ZTE and Huawei, which have Android smartphones all over the world, and not just in China.
