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"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
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.
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
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.
Have any of you actually ever stopped to process what the tagline, "I'm shopping like a billionaire" means?
I've always interpreted it as,
I'm needlessly buying things that don't make me happy, but making the purchase without any hesitation, knowing that the purchase price could never financially impact me in any real way. When I purchase the thing, I'll probably never use it or actually take it out of the box even. It is just empty, hollow. And somewhere inside, I always know that it's all only possible, because I'm actively exploiting the cheap labor of scores of other people that are made to perpetually suffer in generations of abject poverty to allow for my relative comfort...
🎶*"I'm shopping like a billionaire!"*🎶
I am disabled and have limited income I don't have control over increasing or decreasing. I use temu to save a lot of money on essential things that should be cheap but are still overpriced in America. Sponges. Rags. Soaps. Pens. Tools. Home improvement hardware. Plant grow supplies. Gifts for me nieces. The tagline, is just a tagline. Billionaires are not like me and scouring for cheap magic sponges.
Edit: also, temu did not invent drop shipping. Shopping on amazon is literally the same thing.
Comments here: “Yeah right, I’ll believe it when they explain how.”
Article: literally has a section explaining how
Edit:
Replies: "Yeah, but that's just a summary. I'll believe it when they explain in full detail."
Article: literally has a link to the detailed explanation
The claim is they completely bypass all Android and iOS security is pretty unbelievable.
If so then the real discussion is how these zero day exploits are just sitting around.
EDIT: It seems the focus is on Android but all the information is nonsensical, like AI generated buzzword bingo.
It states that it’s somehow breaking the permissions sandbox by dynamically recompiling code after the app is opened. Unless there is some undisclosed exploit that it’s using to break the sandbox, it’s outside most people’s understanding of how these platforms work
How about pass and enforce strong digital privacy protection laws you fucking cowards. When other countries spy on us it's scary and bad, but for US companies? Best we can do is ban porn and demand backdoors to stop E2EE messaging.
I'm shocked, I say. Shocked!
The idea of an app being used to gather additional dat~~e~~a from a customer!
I'm sure Temu collects all information you put into the app and your behaviour in it, but this guy is making some very bold claims about things that just aren't possible unless Temu is packing some serious 0-days.
For example he says the app is collecting your fingerprint data. How would that even happen? Apps don't have access to fingerprint data, because the operating system just reports to the app "a valid fingerprint was scanned" or "an unknown fingerprint was scanned", and the actual fingerprint never goes anywhere. Is Temu doing an undetected root/jailbreak, then installing custom drivers for the fingerprint sensor to change how it works?
And this is just one claim. It's just full of bullshit. To do everything listed there it would have to do multiple major exploits that are on state-actor level and wouldn't be wasted on such trivial purpose. Because now that's it's "revealed", Google and Apple would patch them immediately.
But there is nothing to patch, because most of the claims here are just bullshit, with no technical proof whatsoever.
The study and evidence was already provided months ago
This was also linked in the article if you read it
Here's the actual relevant part
These are security risks to be sure, and while these permissions are (mostly) on the surface, possibly defensible, together they do clearly represent an app trying to gather all of the data that it can.
However, a lot of info from this report is overblown. For example code compilation is sketchy to be sure, but without a privilege escalation attack, it can't do anything the app couldn't do with an update.
Also, there's some weird language in the report, like counting the green security issues in other apps (like tiktok) as if they were also a problem, despite the image showing that green here means it doesn't present that particular risk.
All of this to say, if you have temu, probably uninstall it. It's clearly collecting all the data it can get.
But it's unlikely to be the immediate threat that will have China taking over your phone like this report implies.
The article links to this as technical proof https://grizzlyreports.com/we-believe-pdd-is-a-dying-fraudulent-company-and-its-shopping-app-temu-is-cleverly-hidden-spyware-that-poses-an-urgent-security-threat-to-u-s-national-interests/
There's analysis of decompiled source code.
The analysis shows it's spyware, which I don't question. But it's spyware in the bounds of Android security, doesn't hack anything, doesn't have access to anything it shouldn't, and uses normal Android permissions that you have to grant for it to have access to the data.
For example the article mentions it's making screenshots, but doesn't mention that it's only screenshots of itself. It can never see your other apps or access any of your data outside of it that you didn't give it permission to access.
Don't get me wrong, it's very bad and seems to siphon off any data it can get it's hands on. But it doesn't bypass any security, and many claims in the article are sensational and don't appear in the Grizzly report.
Can someone explain to me how you can just simply program something to bypass privacy and security features? What is the point of having these features if you can literally just program something to ignore them? Like....??? Temu is obviously bad if this is true, but if it IS true, it shouldn't have been possible to begin with!!
Im not sure how they specifically bypass the features in other ways but I imagine some of it is from users accepting permissions under the guise of another use. For example, maybe you accept the microphone permission on tik tok to record video. With that permission in theory the app could now use it maliciously. Of course it should all depend on the users choice for that and im not sure beyond the scope of that.
TORfdot0 shared this comment below:
Someone else posted this report in this thread which does a good job of the deceptive practices and API calls the app uses to trick the user into giving permissions up willingly and otherwise collect data it shouldn’t.
Yesterday, I saw a Temu ad for something and I just wanted to open it to read the info and there were so many popups and "spin the wheel for a prize" and "enter your email here" and so on that I gave up and just looked for the info elsewhere. Never clicking on a Temu link again.
Also fuck their landfillware Chinesium "products".
That's also most of what's on Amazon these days.
I can't believe anyone would buy from Temu. I knew they were Chinese knockoff bullshit the second I saw their first obnoxious ad.
Plenty of items on eBay are just people who buy from China directly and mark up prices. If it is likely made in China and I don’t want it quickly, I’ll buy off aliexpress. That said, alibaba wanted me to upload photo ID which I noped out of. Temu started spamming my email address when I’d never used them. The unsubscribe link went to their website said to adjust your account settings if you didn’t want spam… I never created and account and avoided them completely following that.
All I want to know is what do these Temu people think my life is like?
Are you a busty outdoorswoman?
I mean, you're obviously a sexy military mechanic woman, who goes into battle with fantasy battle armor and goes fishing as a hobby! Duh.
The irony
First, you use Lemmy, that's great. But pls use a client without ads....
That's what you get for using a proprietary Lemmy app. Switch to Thunder, it doesn't have ads, it's open source and in my opinion has the best UI out of all Lemmy apps. Also support the development and join their community: [email protected]
Temu is absolute cancer in terms of business practices so no surprise here at all.
Cancer in terms of, well, everything.
I hate Temu, but this (apparently contracted?) Grizzly Reports report isn't really all that trust inspiring, tbh.
Our experts identified a stack of software functions that are completely inappropriate to and dangerous
The stack difference to the Amazon app they list:
Meh. That's just a sliver worse than your regular, off the shelves proprietary corporate app. I don't see how they can pull off the promise of being a truly dynamic Android app from that report.
I do believe they hover up data, but they aren't otherworldly super hackers. They will probably just ask for the data and the users will hand it over in a second. For most people, it really is that simple.
Like a worse AliExpress
I generally think arstechnica.com does a decent job of being a non-garbage news site. I pay a couple bucks a month for the ad-free RSS feed. This story feels terrible to me. I don’t doubt a law suit has been filed, but I would expect some investigation by the reporter of the extra-ordinary claims of privilege escape the application is claimed to be capable of.
Shocked i tell you. I am shocked.
No way an app would collect data it doesnt need. Preposterous.
Next thing you'll tell me is that tiktok is doing the same thing!
