Google recently has confirmed the presence of a pre-installed malware in a number of its android devices back in 2017. The malware which had already infected the phones even before they were shipped. The malware belongs to the “Triada family” and is termed as one of the “most dangerous trojan” of the world.
As Google described, in their lengthy original blog about the malware, the Triada malware was identified by Dr. Web back in 2017, when they named a few devices infected with the malware including the “Leagoo M5 Plus, Leagoo M8, Nomu S10, and Nomu S20”. It’s rare that anyone of you is using these devices, but the dangerous part in this is that Google itself hasn’t yet declared any detailed list of the devices. Moreover the hackers were identified to be frequently using Chinese language with the vendor name “Yehuo” or “Blazefire.”
The Triada malware wasn’t used by Google anyhow, but was found factory-installed in its products laid a question mark on Google’s image and the security of its products. Triada had got a way to virtually factory-install the malware before the customer could actually open the box. The incident can also be termed as a brilliant yet dangerous case study of how modern hackers are persistent, clever and patient enough to breach the security of such big tech giants, and how adept they have become in the past years.
Now the main question arises, whose mistake was that? Well, Google made it clear that the OEMs weren’t directly responsible for that. In fact, all the OEMs don’t have the resources necessary to build everything they want to use in-house, so they rely on third party vendors. Those third party-vendors can be an easier target than any other tech giant.
But, Google clarifies that the same target can be used to de-infect all the devices via OTA updates, and promises a quick update to the virus. Google also enforces on having Google play services on all smartphones so as to readily check for potential security breaches.
Tech Storyz 