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back to article Chip chomped after debug backdoor found in Android phones

Budget smartphones from Lenovo, Huawei, and other largely Chinese brands contain an accidental backdoor that grants intruders root access. The confirmed affected smartphones run Chinese company MediaTek's MT6582 chipset and are exposed to unauthorised root access thanks to a debugging feature left over from development. The …

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  1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    "It was mainly found in devices running Android 4.4 KitKat, due to a debug feature created for telecommunication interoperability testing in China."

    Add to this to "management authentication issues" for backdoor newspeak.

    3 1 Reply
  3. Michael Thibault
    Devil

    And world+android says:

    "whatevs, no biggie"

    However, this little oops is probably welcome news for wannabe rooters everyware. They'll all be struggling over whose phone it is (really) in no time.

    5 0 Reply
  4. MrRimmerSIR!

    Held to ransom

    Not just the manufacturers at fault. They are limited in what they can do because Mediatek don't release source code. Same reason there aren't third party ROMs for a lot of Chinese phones - most are modified rather than recompiled from source.

    3 0 Reply
    1. Alan Brown Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Held to ransom

      "They are limited in what they can do because Mediatek don't release source code"

      Which is a pretty blatant GPL violation. I'm surprised that Welte hasn't hauled a few Mediatek distributors into german courts.

      0 0 Reply
  5. x 7

    Chinese government strikes again!

    And found out again.....

    1 0 Reply
  6. David Roberts

    Sudo?

    Could this lead to a White Hat tool to get rid of supplier/network cruft from older handsets without needing to install a custom ROM?

    3 0 Reply

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