Recently, a software called ADUPS is detected to collect and transfer users’ data to Shanghai, China. Let’s read on and see what is this ADUPS spyware.

ADUPS Spyware: sophisticated and dangerous

We are living in fast-growing information technology world. Internet has become a common thing as well as essential part in our lives. However. there is one problem coming along with which is data mining. It seems that data mining has become more and more serious, recently. In our earlier article, we talked about many Chinese phones are infected with spywares. Recently, according to Trustlook, ADUPS spyware is detected to be pre-installed in many smartphones collecting users’ data.

Amazon announced to stop putting BLU R1 HD on sale because of the ADUPS spyware preinstalled in the phone in October. It is reported that information of users will be sent back to Shanghai. After that, BLU has released updates to remove the spyware and its smartphones are now selling on Amazon again. According to Trustlook, beside BLU, there are many smartphones from other brands are suggested to come with ADUPS spyware. The report also list the name of some reputed brands such as Lenovo and ZTE. ZTE stated that their products in US market are safe from data-mining spywares.

As usual, in order to roll out FOTA updates in smartphones, manufacturers use AOSP software provided by Google. However, some smartphones makers illegally use ADUPS spyware instead. The spyware is used to collect and transfer information of users like contact lists, call records or text massages. In addition, this data-mining spyware even get the data about phone’s IMEI and IMSI identifiers, MAC address, Android version number and operator information. Encrypting users’ data with a lot of encrypted layers is the mechanism behind the spyware to overcome the detection of anti-virus software.

What to do?

Until now, we don’t have any solution to solve the problem completely. However, smartphones users can check their device whether is under bundled spyware by using anti-virus softwares. Recently, Trustlook has come with an update to detect spyware as well.