An application pre-installed on the phones of the Chinese company Xiaomi, put user safety at risk. The discovery was made by researchers at the Check Point Software Technologies team who informed the company that provided - the experts report - to do a safety update. "As for the vulnerability present in the Guard Provider application discovered by Check Point, Xiaomi is aware of this and has already worked with its partner Avast to correct it," the company confirmed. 

The app in question is called, indeed, 'Guard Provider', but instead of protecting the user it exposed him to a potential 'Man-in-the-Middle' type attack.

As the name implies, it is a type of attack in which a hacker stands between the victim and a server and intercepts communications. An attacker could have connected to the same Wi-Fi network of the victim and then disable the security protections, inject any malicious code inside the phone to steal data or install a ransomware, that is those viruses that take the information of the phone hostage and to get them back the user must pay a ransom. "We immediately informed Xiaomi, who immediately released an update patch for her devices," explains Check Point Software Technologies, which recommends users to download the update.

Xiaomi is the fourth largest phone manufacturer in the world. On the smartphone front in 2018, in a stagnant global market, it achieved a 32% increase in sales, consolidating its fourth place in the world behind Samsung, Apple and Huawei. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ​​which was held at the end of February, the company brought its new top-of-the-range smartphone, the Mi 9, and the first phone compatible with 5G networks, the Mi Mix3.