IrradiatedKiwi
commented
7 months ago @wkrp
Edited my post to make it simpler with additional information. And less human to be used to train "AI"
The "'Anti-fraud" spyware app is officially named as National Anti-Fraud Center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anti-Fraud_Center
"Are they pre-installed by phone providers?"
Xiaomi phones pre-install it on system level.
https://www.gizmochina.com/2022/01/03/miui-13-anti-fraud-scam/
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/675320.html
Besides Xiaomi, National Anti-Fraud Center is pre-installed on almost all new phones made in China. it is de facto mandatory by Chinese government.
or are there any realistic countermeasures?
Flush your phone and install a clean OS yourself which is, ironically, unrealistic for most people.
Has anyone acquired a sample of an "anti-fraud" app, in APK format or similar?
tencent provide binary for windows desktop and android phone.
sj.qq.com/appdetail/com.hicorenational.antifraud
Xiaomi app store also provide download
r.app.xiaomi.com/details?id=com.hicorenational.antifraud
the user's own device is not trustworthy?
National Anti-Fraud Center is not limited to android phones. there are other binaries for apple devices and windows desktop.
National Anti-Fraud Center based plugins also reported found in residential FTTR modem named antifraudv3
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/701596.html
The auditors faced several limitations, including regional blocks pertaining to not having access to a China-based phone number
China-based phone numbers are linked to individual persons. To obtain a China-based phone number, real identification and possibly Facial recognition are required. I don't think anyone in China can safely provide a phone number for research.
but I don't know what "pt" is.
"pt" probably stands for Platform (PingTai).
I was tethering my laptop using my China Mobile cellular service on an iPhone (WITHOUT installing any related app)
gaukas post has important info I missed. I heard similiar cases too.
wkrp
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gaukas
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An article from Radio Free Asia (archive), via Human Rights in China's 2024-04-02 weekly brief (archive), says that police in China are inspecting people's phones to check for circumvention apps, and that people have been forced to install an "anti-fraud" (反诈骗) app that (at least) checks for installed circumvention software.
It's not clear to me the circumstances under which someone might have such an "anti-fraud" app installed. Are they pre-installed by phone providers? Automatically installed by phone repair shops? Installed by the police after any police encounter?
Has anyone acquired a sample of an "anti-fraud" app, in APK format or similar?
254 is a previous thread that mentions "anti-fraud" apps.
Is there anything that can be done, in terms of circumvention, when the user's own device is not trustworthy? We almost always model the user's own computer as being uncontrolled by the censor. Is it an impossible situation, or are there any realistic countermeasures?
The Radio Free Asia article has a photograph of an SMS from the Hubei provincial police department notifying the owner that circumvention software was detected and telling them to uninstall it. Presumably the detection was the result of an "anti-fraud" app.
In 2018, a spyware app called 净网卫士 (Jingwang Weishi) was reverse-engineered by the OTF Red Team. They found many security flaws and partially mapped the backend infrastructure. That app was targeted at the Uyghur ethnic minority—a reminder that surveillance systems are usually first tested on more vulnerable and marginalized people before moving on to the rest of society.
https://www.opentech.fund/news/app-targeting-uyghur-population-censors-content-lacks-basic-security/ https://public.opentech.fund/documents/OTF_JingWang_Report_v2.pdf