Videostrong Built a Backdoor Into 1.3 Million Android TV Boxes and Sold the Access to Criminals

Thu, 05 Nov 2026 11:47:26 +0100

1,472,554 TV boxes and other Android devices in over 170 countries shipped with a backdoor. The owners did nothing wrong. The maker put it in the firmware, at least since 2020, and sold access to criminals.

On November 2, Google’s threat intelligence team named the company behind the backdoor: Videostrong Technology, a manufacturer in China that designs and builds Android TV boxes for its own brands and for other companies. The team writes with high confidence that Videostrong developed the backdoor, put it on its boxes, turned them into a botnet and ran it for profit, as a deliberate campaign by the company itself. The team calls a device maker that infects its own users on purpose an unacceptable breach of trust. Videostrong then sold access to those boxes to other criminal groups, who paid to load their own software onto them.

Android TV on HackingPassion.com : root@HackingPassion.com-[~]

Videostrong Built a Backdoor Into 1.3 Million Android TV Boxes and Sold the Access to Criminals