Xiaomi Phones Are A Threat To Security, Alerts Indian Air Force

[donganaaK]

 

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By tech2 News Staff /  22 Oct 2014 , 14:32

After a grand entry into the Indian market earlier this year and making its presence felt with unique flash sales and zero-advertising expenditure, Xiaomi has now allegedly found itself embroiled in a new controversy- snooping and stealing data. If the chatter online is to be believed then Xiaomi has been accused by the Indian Air Force (IAF) of sending user data to servers in remote located in China.

In fact, IAF is also believed to have alerted all its Commands and Squadrons and suggested that air force officers and their families should refrain from using Chinese mobile devices. This isn’t the first time the Indian defense forces have made such an accusation. The Indian Army had issued a similar security alert against Chinese mobile applications. The Army claimed that the location-sharing features of some of the applications may be wrongly used to track and target people working in defence, research, government sector and so on.

According to New Indian Express, the latest IAF alert note reads, “F-secure, a leading security solution company, recently carried out a test of Xiaomi Redmi 1s, the company’s budget smartphone, and found that the phone was forwarding carrier name, phone number, IMEI (the device identifier) plus numbers from address book and text messages back to Beijing.”

Talking about incidents of Xiaomi devices sending user data to China, the note further states that a Hong-Kong-based phone user has tested the Redmi Note and found that it has been designed to automatically connect to an IP address that is hosted somewhere in China. The data sent to the server includes media storage and SMSes.

Xiaomi has faced several allegations of security leaks in recent months.  In August, the Taiwanese government had started investigating whether Xiaomi is a cyber security threat and said it will make a decision within three months. The government had begun performing independent tests on Xiaomi phones after reports about some models automatically sending user data back to the firm’s servers in mainland China surfaced.

The note also cites Phonearena that claims the Chinese government may be involved. “According to the PhoneArena report, looking up the website of the company owning the IP address in the range 42.62.48.0-42.62.48.255 reveals that the website owner is www.cnnic.cn. CNNIC is the administrative agency responsible for Internet affairs under the Ministry of Information Industry of People’s Republic of China. It is based in the Zhongguancun high tech district of Beijing,” IAF adds in the note.

Xiaomi has been tight lipped and hasn’t commented on the matter yet. India is an extremely crucial market for Xiaomi and the company has almost shed the Chinese brand image to woo audiences here. In a very short span of time, the company has managed to sell well over 2,50,000 units here. In an earlier interview, Barra had said, “India as a market has a lot of potential for smartphones, but it will probably take a couple of years for it to reach this potential. It’s like quarter of a size of China’s smartphone market or maybe even a fifth, so obviously there’s a long way to go.” If the Xiaomi system turns out to have loopholes, it could be a huge setback for the company’s image and obvious sales in India.

 

 

[ravula]

Chinki gallu epudu Isanti lathkoor panulu chestaru
Beware guys

[thedarkknight]

some other country thaiwan anukunta elanti issue ni edho raise chesindhi 

[donganaaK]

some other country thaiwan anukunta elanti issue ni edho raise chesindhi 

 

taiwan is also officially a chinese territory .... USA vallu raise chesaru issue , they banned all the govt agencies from using any kind of networking equipment from Huawei

[KeyserSoze]

ee article edo exaggeration chesi rasinlu......xiaomi provides its cloud services and other inbuilt features in MIUI custom skin and company specifically says that those servers are in china...It is open information provided by company...idi edo secret iyinattu rasindu......also just today they made a promise that they are setting up servers in India for Indian customers.

 

Todays Techcrunch article.....

 

 

 

 

The past year has been an eventful one for Chinese phone-maker Xiaomi. The company’s devices are now sold in seven countries in Asia, that’s a big step up from Xiaomi’s inception — when it retailed in China only — and, with big plans to be global, the company is finally migrating international user data to servers outside of China, as International VP Hugo Barra revealed today.

This development is important for Xiaomi customers and future buyers of its phones for a couple of reasons. (While the migration will affect international users, those in China will continue to use local servers in the country.)

Firstly, hosting data outside of Chinese services will quicken Xiaomi’s services, which include its iMessage-like MIUI Cloud Messaging service and other features in its company’s MIUI rom, which is basically its own, modified version of Android.

“With this migration, we are expecting to cut network request latency for users in India by up to 350ms, and users in Malaysia to experience 2-3x faster Mi Cloud photosync,” Barra explained.

Xiaomi’s services business is hugely important to the company. With its flagship phone retailing around $300 — its top-selling mid-range devices are priced around $150 — margins are tight meaning that the company generates far less revenue from hardware. In addition, it brings in revenue from software services. Barra previously told The Next Web that Xiaomi is already profitable, but the company has only ever realized revenue figures, rather than profit and loss data.

Privacy is, of course, the other important issue here.

Xiaomi got itself into hot water this summer when it was found be sharing a range of user information with a server in China. A report from security company F-Secure found that the device’s IMEI number, customer’s phone number, phone contacts and text messages received were all shared but — importantly — there was no way for customers to opt out.

As with all things China and privacy-related, the revelation raised concerns that the information could be accessible by the Chinese government.

 

Xiaomi quickly offered an opt out for users, but moving their data overseas — MIUI services will be housed in Amazon AWS data centers in Oregon, USA, and Singapore — is the best response to any claims of nefarious intentions.

Indeed, just this week we were reminded of data issues in China after the government was accused of staging a major attack on Apple’s iCloud service with the intention of wiretapping users and accessing their data.

The migration of Xiaomi e-commerce services has already been completed, but MIUI service data is still in the process of being transitioned over. Barra said that it should be done before the end of the year, with some elements completed sooner.

In addition, Xiaomi is aiming to provide a better quality of service in large markets like India and Brazil, the latter of which it aims to launch in soon. Since Amazon Web Services is not currently available in either market, Barra says the company will work with local providers to make sure that “users in these markets will be much closer to their data and enjoy even faster speeds by connecting to local servers.”

Providing faster and more secure user data is of the utmost importance for Xiaomi’s current business model and, of course, its efforts to expand its sales to other parts of the world.

“Our primary goal in moving to a multi-site server architecture was to improve the performance of our services for Mi fans around the world… At the same time, it also better equips us to maintain high privacy standards and comply with local data protection regulations. This is a very high priority for Xiaomi as we expand into new markets over the next few years,” Barra said.

Xiaomi is on track to sell more than 60 million devices this year and, with aggressive global plans, CEO and co-founder Lei Jun believes the company’s sales could top 100 million in 2015.

 

[thedarkknight]

taiwan is also officially a chinese territory .... USA vallu raise chesaru issue , they banned all the govt agencies from using any kind of networking equipment from Huawei

kk