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

Post by Someone1234 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 4:28 AM UTC

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.

Post by gregoryl » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #11

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.

What intelligence would be gained from the poorest 10% of the US? I'd imagine it is more useful to marketers than actual intelligence agencies (which is in fact who is doing it). These seem like imaginings based on too little thought and too much paranoia. But whenever "China" comes up, even if it is just a company located there, we get these exact same popular statements without justification.

Post by ARandomerDude » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 4:37 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #11

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.

What intelligence would be gained from the poorest 10% of the US? I'd imagine it is more useful to marketers than actual intelligence agencies (which is in fact who is doing it). These seem like imaginings based on too little thought and too much paranoia. But whenever "China" comes up, even if it is just a company located there, we get these exact same popular statements without justification.

Post by Someone1234 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 4:53 AM UTC

ARandomerDude wrote: post #15

Someone1234 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What intelligence would be gained from the poorest 10% of the US? I'd imagine it is more useful to marketers than actual intelligence agencies (which is in fact who is doing it). These seem like imaginings based on too little thought and too much paranoia. But whenever "China" comes up, even if it is just a company located there, we get these exact same popular statements without justification.

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?

Post by jtl999 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

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.