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US government-funded phones come pre-installed with unremovable malware

blog.malwarebytes.com

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Re: US government-funded phones come pre-installed with unremovable malware

#21

Post by perl4ever »

Someone1234 wrote: post #17
ARandomerDude wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scenarios are obvious and virtually limitless. For example: This low-income person drives to Langley, VA every night at 11pm. He might be a janitor at the CIA. We already know he's poor because he has this phone. Can we find out more and potentially bribe him to leave this ordinary-looking pen in a conference room?

Seems like a stretch. If you really want to find the CIA's janitor just drive a passive cellular monitor near it and grab everyone's IMEI and cross-check it. Plus if someone has a full time job with security clearance working for the USG they likely aren't getting a free phone anyway.

I'm not a spy or imaginative enough to lay out a scenario, but remember if someone has a security clearance, then someone, who is assumed to be the Chinese government, likely has their entire file (clearance investigation, fingerprints, you name it) due to the Office of Personnel Management having everything stolen. So this could be used in synergy with any other tactics applied to CIA agents who aren't compromised by the OPM or people without clearances.

Re: US government-funded phones come pre-installed with unremovable malware

#22

Post by perl4ever »

whitecream wrote: post #10
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #5

> The only difference between the two codes are their variable names. The more discernible variant of this malware uses Chinese characters for variable names. Therefore, we can assume the origin of this malware is China. I mean... that’s possible and not an unlikely scenario - I guess. But it’s hardly anything but an anecdote. If I was a Russian or American hacker, I would have Chinese variable names swapped out with…

For what it's worth, if the image they used is representative of the other variable names they found, then that line of reasoning doesn't make sense - the names are just gibberish characters in Chinese, and some even have random radicals and other characters thrown in. This seems more like the type of strings you get when you take a bunch of random valid UCS-2 code points.

I had an issue on my Windows computer with some UTF-something text displaying as Chinese characters a while back...

Re: US government-funded phones come pre-installed with unremovable malware

#24

Post by ryanlol »

Am I just super jet lagged, or does Malwarebytes seem to avoid talking about what this “malware” actually does?

Is it just click fraud like the malware names suggest? That would hardly hurt the users.

Some might even think that click fraud fucking over online advertising platforms is a good thing...

Re: US government-funded phones come pre-installed with unremovable malware

#25

Post by oefrha »

staplers wrote: post #7

Chinese malware on a Chinese phone given to US citizens at a massive discount.. Sounds like a brilliant cyber-espionage tactic.

The only evidence to classify this as “Chinese malware” (unless I missed something) is this:

> The more discernible variant of this malware uses Chinese characters for variable names. Therefore, we can assume the origin of this malware is China.

But the screenshot showing “Chinese characters for variable names” clearly displays gibberish; some of those “characters” aren’t even valid characters. Anyone who can read some Chinese can confirm this. Therefore, it’s more likely an obfuscation technique designed to trick people who don’t bother to verify anything and quickly jump to conclusions.

Edit: Or just an obfuscating technique that replaces variable names with random code points. Otherwise non-gibberish would be used, presumably.

Re: US government-funded phones come pre-installed with unremovable malware

#27

Post by post_below »

ryanlol wrote: post #24

Am I just super jet lagged, or does Malwarebytes seem to avoid talking about what this “malware” actually does? Is it just click fraud like the malware names suggest? That would hardly hurt the users. Some might even think that click fraud fucking over online advertising platforms is a good thing...

Click fraud doesn't fuck over online advertising platforms, if it goes undetected it fucks over advertisers who use the platform. If it's detected, no one pays for it.

Re: US government-funded phones come pre-installed with unremovable malware

#28

Post by tmpz22 »

kbumsik wrote: post #23

I'm not American but what are "United States government-funded phones" for? Why anyone wants to use it? The article doesn't give much context...

In California there’s at least one major program which straight up gives phones to the homesless. I imagine it could also be fore low income households.
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