Heads up, owners of BLU smartphones, because a new security issue has been discovered that may have affected your device.
Security firm Kryptowire recently found a piece of software that transmits the full contents of text messages, contact lists, call logs, location info, and more to Chinese servers. The software is called Adups and it’s made by a Chinese company called Shanghai Adups Technology Company.
The Adups software transmits this information every 72 hours, and it does so in the background so that you don’t know it’s happening. “Even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t have known about it,” says Tom Karygiannis, Kryptowire vice president.
This software is said to have been written for an unidentified Chinese manufacturer that wanted to store texts, call logs, and more for customer support. Shanghai Adups Technology Company says that its code is on all kinds of devices, including affordable phones, cars, and smart products, and the Adups was found on some BLU smartphones.
BLU has a product page on its site that names the R1 HD, Energy X Plus 2, Studio Touch, Advance 4.0 L2, Neo XL, and Energy Diamond as the phones that were affected by the Adups software. However, BLU says that it has removed Adups from those phones. “It was obviously something that we were not aware of. We moved very quickly to correct it,” says BLU CEO Samuel Ohev-Zion. “Today there is no BLU device that is collecting that information.”
If you’ve got one of the aforementioned BLU phones and you want to confirm whether or not your phone is being affected by Adups, you can launch the Settings app, go into Apps, hit the three-dot Menu icon, click “Show system”, and select “Wireless Update”. If your version is between 5.0.x and 5.3.x, you should contact BLU for help. If it’s any other version, you are not affected.
