Gionee Charged Guilty of Intentionally Infecting 20 Million Phones with Trojan Horse Malware for Profit

Urian B., Tech Times 07 December 2020, 01:12 am

Smartphone maker Gionee is currently in a lot of trouble as a court in China has charged the company of intentionally installing harmful malware on its smartphones. The Chinese smartphone maker is now facing some serious troubles due to this intentional move.

20 million smartphones infected with Trojan Horse

According to a report made by a Chinese publication which was then reported again by News18, Gionee has infected around 20 million smartphones with a deadly Trojan Horse through an app from December of 2018 to December 2019. The report stated that this app was the company's way to get profit from its users through the use of unsolicited ads as well as other reported illegitimate methods.

The Shenzhen Zhipu Technology Co. Ltd, which is a known subsidiary of Gionee is responsible for implanting the Trojan Horse through a software using the known "Story Lock Screen" app. The report then further explains that the software is now automatically updated on the alleged affected Gionee smartphones even without its users knowing using the Pull method.

Dark Horse Platform used

The company used a "Dark Horse Platform" in order to both install and update the said Trojan Horse malware on the affected smartphones. It was reported that the Chinese smartphone maker was able to make $4.2 million through affecting about 21.75 million smartphones from December 2018 up to October 2019.

The Chinese court has officially found Zhu Ying, Xu Li, Jia Zhengqiang, as well as Pan Qi all guilty of the process of illegally controlling the said mobile devices. Zhu Ying, Xu Li, and also Jia Zhengqiang have all been sentenced to three years in prison while Pan Qi has only been sentenced to prison for just six months. All of them were given a $30,600 fine for this as well.

Incident happened under Jian Group

Gionee, founded back in 2002, is known as one of China's largest mobile manufacturers before it was then sold to an Indian company called Jain Group back in 2018. Over in 2012, Gionee was said to enjoy a pleasing 4.7% market share over in China.

Although Gionee is currently big in China, it has not yet made a huge impact in the western market compared to other massive Chinese companies like Huawei or even Xiaomi. Another article by Gizmochina confirms the reports of this illegal activity taking place. The companies allegedly made money through unlawful promotion of apps and other illegal means to generate income through the use of smartphones.

This illegal activity took a while to be discovered and dealt with since it had reportedly been going on ever since 2018 up to October 2019 which is almost a whole year of illegal activity. Although Gionee has not yet been able to break massively into the western market, there is still a possibility that its phones that contain malware could have made their way outside of China.