Quote:A vulnerability exposing users to Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) attacks was patched by Xiaomi in the pre-installed security app Guard Provider following a disclosure report from Check Point Research.
 
Ironically, as discovered by Check Point's researchers, the Guard Provider app which should protect Xiaomi users from malware would instead allow malicious actors to carry out MiTM attacks because of "the unsecured nature of the network traffic to and from Guard Provider and the use of multiple SDKs within the same app" after connecting to the wireless network used by the vulnerable devices.
 
To be more exact, the security flaw was caused by communication issues between the various SDKs used by the Guard Provider app making it possible for potential attackers to "inject any rogue code he chooses such as password stealing, ransomware, tracking or any other kind of malware."
 
What made this security issue all the more serious was the fact that the Check Point Research team found it in one of the pre-installed applications on Xiaomi smartphones, a company which ranked third in the mobile phone market during 2018 with an 8% market share.