The government of Lithuania has advised its citizens not to buy or stop using some smartphone models produced and sold by Chinese companies, after having detected problems for the protection of privacy and censorship systems. The Lithuanian Ministry of Defense said the affected phones had already been indicated in the past “by the international community to be at risk from the point of view of cybersecurity.”
An official government document calls for do not use the 8T 5G models from OnePlus, P40 5G from Huawei and Mi 10T 5G from Xiaomi. For the first two, not much other information has been provided, while for the model produced by Xiaomi the document provides more details.
According to the Lithuanian authorities, the Mi 10T contains a censorship system in its software to identify and block the use of nearly 450 words, both in Chinese and in various Western languages, linked to particularly sensitive issues for China's internal and foreign policy. Among the words that are identified and blocked by the system are “free Tibet”, “democratic movement”, “we want Taiwan independence” and other expressions not necessarily related to territorial disputes concerning China.
The Lithuanian government has confirmed that the censorship system is present on the smartphone, although it is not active in Lithuania or in the rest of the European Union. However, its IT experts believe that Xiaomi can activate the feature at any time, without users' knowledge.
Lithuanian @cert_lt investigated 5G cell phones made by ???????? manufacturers Xiaomi, Huawei & OnePlus. The initial results of the investigation show some cyber and personal data security risks. Study was initiated to ensure the safe use of 5G mobile devices and software sold in ????????. pic.twitter.com/ukw7InzQAk
— Lithuanian MOD (@Lithuanian_MoD) September 21, 2021
A system that automatically sends an encrypted message to Xiaomi every time you use the company's cloud service, to keep your files online. The content of the message is not known and its sending is in any case hidden from the smartphone owner, a circumstance that made the security experts who carried out the analysis on behalf of the government suspicious.
Huawei's P40 5G smartphone has instead been reported for the presence of software that can lead to downloading malicious applications. The company responded by clarifying to carry out “security checks to make sure that the user downloads only safe and operational apps on the devices”, and to respect the European privacy regulations.
Xiaomi responded to the reporting by the Lithuanian government claiming not to censor communications and to comply with the laws for the protection of personal data (GDPR) in Europe, but without providing clarification on any limitations in China:
Xiaomi devices do not censor communications from or to their users. Xiaomi has never limited and never will limit or block any kind of personal behavior on the part of its users. Xiaomi fully respects and protects the legal rights of all its users, and complies with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The Chinese company in the second quarter of 2021 has surpassed Samsung, becoming the largest smartphone seller in Europe thanks to the lower prices of its devices, while offering features comparable to those provided by other large manufacturers. The model reported by the Lithuanian government dates back to about a year ago and is just one of the many smartphones that the Chinese company sells in Europe. Xiaomi has not yet commented on the news from Lithuania.
In recent months, relations between Lithuania and China have worsened. In August, the Chinese government asked the Lithuanian ambassador to leave Beijing and announced that it would withdraw its diplomatic mission from Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. The decision stemmed from the Lithuanian government's choice to accept a “Taiwan Representative Office” in its country. Diplomatic missions in Europe usually refer to the city of Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, while they do not directly mention Taiwan, over which China claims its sovereignty.
