The Lithuanian Ministry of Defense, which has detected a built-in censorship feature on smartphones manufactured in China, has warned its citizens not to throw away their Xiaomi smartphones and not buy new ones.
The entrenched censorship feature that moved the country emerged after the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense’s report in conjunction with the National Cyber Security Center. According to the information disclosed in the report, Xiaomi has launched its smartphones in China. “Free Tibet”, “Long live independent Taiwan”, “democratic movements” as features to detect and censor certain terms started using it.
Ministry, this It is also found in Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G phones that are on sale in Europe. He stated that they have detected it and that although this feature is disabled for now, the built-in censorship can be activated by remote intervention.
It turns out that Xiaomi phones are transmitting confidential data to a server in Singapore.
In the published report, together with the terms mentioned above It is stated that a total of 449 Chinese terms are on the censorship list.It was stated that the built-in censorship was also applied to the activities made through the browser. The Ministry of Defense emphasized that citizens living in Lithuania should throw their Xiaomi phones in the trash and should not buy another phone of the same brand.
Deputy Defense Minister Margiris Abukevicius used the following statements in a statement to reporters after the publication of the report; “Our advice is not to buy new Chinese phones and get rid of previously purchased ones as quickly as possible.”
The National Cyber Center stated that they detected that Xiaomi phones were sending encrypted phone usage data to a server in Singapore. While the same vulnerability was detected on the P40 5G phone, OnePlus phones do not have features such as built-in censorship or secretly sending data.i specified.
Source :
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/21/tech/lithuania-china-smart-phone-censorship-intl-hnk/index.html