Devices from Huawei, Lenovo, and other Chinese companies have a major security bug

Uh oh. Security researcher Justin Case has discovered a very dangerous security bug in many phones from Chinese manufacturers. The bug allows an attacker to enable root access, which then gives them the ability to access personal data, monitor communications, and spy on the user. MediaTek has officially confirmed that this bug is present on Android 4.4 KitKat devices with their processors.

The bug was actually a bit of code that allowed for debugging, but the code was supposed to be removed before the phones were put in production. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Now there are devices from Huawei, Lenovo, and other Chinese manufacturers out there with this bug. MediaTek says it is the manufacturers job to disable debugging features before shipping devices.

MediaTek says they are aware of the issue, but they haven’t provided any details on a fix. Some of the phones with that could have this bug include the Huawei Honor 3C, Huawei Ascend G730, Lenovo S930, and other phones from obscure manufacturers such as Elephone, Jiayu, and Doogee. If you live in the US, there’s a good chance you don’t have to worry about this bug.

[via GSM Arena]