I got this new Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 and after couple of hours started to notice strange behaviour. It showed pop-up advertising! Pop-ups came on top of any app I happened to be using that time. Obviously that was really annoying but also very scary, as my whole phone was potentially compromised. I tried factory resetting the phone, but it didn't help. I did a full wipe and installed an official ROM from Xiaomi's homepage. Also changed all the passwords that could have been compromised.
I was just thinking what's the lesson here? Can we trust any software that is pre-installed in new electronics or is it just the Chinese phones? I know Xiaomi's own Android is full of bloat and probably spies for the Chinese government, but the custom ROM was clearly installed for someone's personal gain.
I already posted this to /v/security but I think this /v/android might be a more useful place to share this incident.
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[–] 007ace 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
There have been a few apps that will ask for root access and install ad servers to your /system partition. So it sticks around after factory resets (but a fresh from flash will remove it). Google 'Shuanet' for more info.
[–] priva [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Thanks for this piece of information! I kinda assumed the whole ROM needs to be hacked, if factory reset does not fix the problem, but yeah my knowledge is very limited.