Spyware Found in AceMagic Mini-PCs

Can't wait until this spurs the security community into doing a deep look at the roms on these cheap Chinese boards. Yeah the malware was caught - but what's more important is the intent. This is a country that is constantly behind breaches and botnets... and here we have these PCs being marketed as router replacents and mini servers. It doesn't take much to figure out that this is free back door territory.

but what’s more important is the intent

Afaik, the problem was a trojan inside the cracked windows images they used to avoid paying for windows keys. I doubt the intent was to create a botnet, it seems more like generic cybercrime.

I personally always wipe the preinstalled OS to avoid issues like this. However, make sure to use a clean image directly from the source. Simply reinstalling from within Windows wouldn't have helped in this case, because the malware was part of the recovery files.

The story originated from a video from the "The Net Guy Reviews" YouTube channel. Most articles I've seen so far oversimplify the issue and/or get facts wrong, therefore I recommend checking out the original video if you want to learn more.
- Yeah malware is everywhere - This could simply be a product of an individual actor abusing their position in a supply chain.... but this also goes for hardware as well. It is certainly a more difficult vector to attack from but due to its 'level' it's a valuable position to compromise.
Yes! I've been telling this to friends who keep buying Chinese boards to use as routers and NAS ... wth
- I mean depending on what board you’re using it’s unlikely it’s hardware level snooping that supersedes changing the firmware. Especially if you stick to those that run on open source firmware.

It comes pre installed with Windows, so that's a given isn't it?

Yes, but this type also steals your credentials.
- You're repeating what @sugartits@lemmy.world said 😉
  
  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Remember kids if you're going to buy a Chinese pre-built, wipe that shit before use.

Remember kids if you’re going to buy a ~~Chinese~~ pre-built, wipe that shit before use.

Always wipe and start fresh. Yes, Chinese brands seem to be worse about security, but there's no reason to keep bloatware and FSM only know what other crapware the OEM installed.
- Always wipe and start fresh.
  
  NSA is unhappy about this one little trick!
  
  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
To me that always applies, irregardless of the manufacturer. Supply chain attacks are a thing, they are not even necessarily targeted. "I'm not interesting enough" does not apply: everyone has contact with other people, mostly everyone has (or will have) voting rights, and some will have authority over other people.
Or... don't buy it to begin with.
- Yup, I don't trust it to not install a rootkit on the BIOS or something. Buy from reputable companies, and if you get a prebuilt PC, you'll probably want to reinstall Windows to get all of the adware off. If you don't use Windows, you're probably fine with just buying from a reputable vendor.

Kinda low effort when just a windows defender scan can detect it.

imagine what they didn't find!

Permanently Deleted

Unfortunetaly, that does close to nothing when the issue is spyware on firmware
- According to this Tom’s Hardware article (https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/mini-pcs/mini-pc-maker-ships-systems-with-factory-installed-spyware-acemagic-says-issue-was-contained-to-the-first-shipment) it isn’t firmware based spyware but just existing on the machine drive.
  
  They were also found on the restore partition so a full wipe and fresh install would eliminate the issue. AceMagic have also claimed that the issue was isolated to the first round of shipments.
- Permanently Deleted
- Nothing in this article said anything about the device firmware being compromised
Hopefully it’s not built into a rom chip on any number of custom components in these mini PCs making it software independent.

Now check the other mini PCs from other random Aliexpress, Banggood, Gearbest and Temu vendors...

These are gonna be a good deal soon.

If anyone is willing to buy them.
- I mean, technically, you can always use hardware, even if it's been bombed to shit with malware. Just never connect it to any sort of network, never transfer files from that PC with bidirectional channels and never use that PC's hardware anywhere else.
- Thats why they’ll be a good deal.
  
  The hardware is the same as several other brands, and none of them have come up bad. Ultimately it really does look like someone either got got on the image they cloned from or maliciously inserted windows spyware into it. Either way it’s nothing a flatten and reinstall won’t fix.
  
  Hell, if the windows keys are legit you don’t even need to use the oem reinstall media.

Maybe we should have a working Linux live USB before we buy a new laptop so that we can set it up without connecting it to the home router.

Does not help when the spyware is embedded in the firmware.
- Which, I would expect, happens to most of these shitty pcs from no-name Chinese brands.

I am not saying that the image is to be trusted, but "Win32/Wacatac.B!ml" is just a generic name for anything obfuscated by vmprotect. Most cracks are detected as "Win32/Wacatac.B!ml"

Also, because it's detected by microsoft defender itself, if they really had a malicious intent, they would have whitelisted those executables in the disk image.

The vendor itself acknowledged the situation by saying that the virus problem was solved!