Huawei has patched a security flaw on some of its MateBook laptop models that may have been used to take control of the user. The deterioration that was determined by the Chinese company in January and detailed by Microsoft at the end of last month was related to an unplanned software called PCManager. It seems to act as a supervisor – following a technique initially used by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US. The advanced threat protection of Windows 10 Defender (ATP) was able to distinguish the problem on Huawei machines. The latest discovery comes just days after a UK government report highlighted “severe weaknesses” in various Huawei devices.
As noted by Ars Technica, the vulnerability was not a typical malware or bug; instead, it was a Huawei-written driver who was acting as a supervisor to monitor the system through a regular user service. If the service is down or stopped, the driver has the ability to resume it.
The Microsoft security team was able to detect this issue – thanks to an alarm raised by the ATP of Windows 10. “We track abnormal behavior on a device management driver developed by Huawei,” he wrote in a blog post of the month passed. “Deeper digging, we found a design mistake that led to a vulnerability that could allow escalation of local privilege.”
Huawei issued an update in January that was mainly updating the PCManager software to fix the security path.
However, concerns have been raised about how Huawei is designing its software to get access to the backdoor. A BBC report quoting a Surrey University security surgeon expert points out that the newly discovered meta had “the backdrops” of a backdoor built by the US NSA to keep an eye on the targets.
This is not the first time Huawei has raised its eyebrows for a serious security issue. Last week, a report published by a British government board, claimed “important technical issues” and “basic defects” in Huawei’s products that reviewed. The Shenzhen-based company is also facing US pressure on espionage fears.