MFSocket: A Chinese surveillance tool
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It is well known that China spies on its fellow citizens. In this article I will tell you the story of an Android application called MFSocket, a new monitoring tool made in China. This tool allows the police to extract from the victim’s phone a lot of data such as calendar events, SMS, MMS, videos, contacts, Telegram contacts, …
The Story
On June 21, 2019 Muyi Xiao, a Chinese journalist, posted on Twitter a thread on an Android application called MFSocket. On Chinese social networks people started to report about police checking people’s phones in Beijing and Shanghai and she decided to investigate.
Indeed by searching ‘MFSocket’ on Google I find this type of report:
- “When the police check the phone, it will be installed for you: Mfsocket”
- “Yesterday, the company asked us to go to the police station, and then the police installed a software called MFsocket. I thought it was monitoring software!”
In her thread, Muyi mentioned the company behind MFSocket. She found a troubleshoot guide which link the app to a company called Meiya Pico.
Meiya Pico is not a new player. In two excellent articles, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal exposed them as a Chinese firm who sell forensics products to the Chinese authorities.
Important info from the troubleshoot guide. The police seems to use Windows to operate the app. Interesting, we will use this info later.
Muyi did a fantastic journalistic job, now it’s time to do my job. Am I able to technically confirm what she found? What are the…
