this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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858
Shopping app Temu is “dangerous malware,” spying on your texts, lawsuit claims (arstechnica.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 202 points 5 months ago (4 children)

"Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users," Griffin's complaint said. "Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place."

That's just nuts

[–] [email protected] 108 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah, it is. It's such an extraordinary claim.

One requiring extraordinary evidence that wasn't provided.

"It's doing amazing hacks to access everything and it's so good at it it's undetectable!" Right, how convenient.

[–] [email protected] 100 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Libmanwe-lib.so is a library file in machine language (compiled). A Google search reveals that it is exclusively mentioned in the context of PDD software—all five search results refer to PDD’s apps. According to this discussion on GitHub, “the malicious code of PDD is protected by two sets of VMPs (manwe, nvwa)”. Libmanwe is the library to use manwe.

An anonymous user uploaded a decompiled version of libmanwe-lib to GitHub. It reads like it is a list of methods to encrypt, decrypt or shift integer signals, which fits the above description as a VMP for the sake of hiding a program’s purpose.

In plain words, TEMU’s app employed a PDD proprietary measure to hide malicious code in an opaque bubble within the application’s executables

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So wait, bit-shifting some integers is now considered being malicious? Is that really the defense here? Using that definition just about all software in existence is malicious.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

This is why companies like Apple are at least a tiny bit correct when they go on about app security and limiting code execution. The fact it aligns with their creed of controlling all of the technology they sell makes the whole debate a mess, though. And it does not excuse shitty behavior on their part.

But damn

And if they got this past Apple in their platforms. That’s even wilder.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

The article linked to the analysis and on a quick glance, it seems to be done entirely against the Android variant of the app. This makes sense because if the alleged actions are true, they’d never have gotten on to the App Store for iOS Apple users… or at least as of a couple months ago. Who knows what kind of vulnerability is exposed by Apple only doing limited cursory checks for 3rd party App Stores.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Shits getting scarier by the day.