One of Google’s Android partners turned 1.3 million set-top boxes into a botnet
Stevie Bonifield is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI.
Google says one of its Android manufacturing partners secretly built a backdoor in 1.3 million devices and turned them into a botnet. The company says it has now dismantled the backdoor and “cut ties” with the manufacturer, the Shenzhen, China-based Videostrong Technology Co., which has been banned from building or selling certified Android devices or supplying software for them.
The infected devices were used without owners’ knowledge for “malicious activity,” like ad fraud, data exfiltration, and routing unauthorized network traffic. Google claims the “backdoor and botnet were intentionally developed, deployed, and operated for financial gain,” saying:
Videostrong monetized the backdoor by selling access to criminal affiliates and loading those affiliates’ malware modules onto infected devices. These secondary modules were conducting ad-fraud; silently enrolling infected...
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