Data Backdoor Found On BLU Mobile Phones
Kryptowire, an American digital security firm, recently made a disturbing discovery about smartphones being sold by Blu Products, a company which makes low-cost phones like the Blu R1 HD, which was recently offered on Amazon for just $50.
According to Kryptowire, they discovered that a copy of Adups, a software from a Chinese vendor, was sending data including call logs, contact lists, user location information, each phone’s international mobile equipment identity, each phone’s mobile subscriber identity and complete text message logs back to a server in China every 72 hours.
According to Blu, this impacted some 120,000 of their devices, and has since been corrected via software update. According to Adups, their software resides on more than 700 million phones worldwide, mostly in Asia.
The bottom line is both simple and terrifying. It pays to know who had a hand in the creation of your phone and what companies have software running on it when it reaches your desk from the factory. If these details are not known to you, then it could be the case that the phone you’re relying on to conduct business could also be quietly relaying personal, confidential and proprietary information to some unknown third party.
Diligence is the watchword here. If your existing IT staff is already pressed to the limit, and doesn’t have the time or the capacity to keep track of these sorts of things, call us today. One of our knowledgeable team members would be happy to talk with you to learn the details of your current situation, what kinds of products you use and where they come from.
Armed with this information, we can do the heavy lifting for you, researching who had a hand in not only the manufacture of the devices you’re relying on, but which companies have software you may not be aware of running in the background. Then, if need be, we can work with you to devise a solution that will help keep your company’s data more secure.