Chinese court finds Gionee guilty of planting Trojan Horses on over 20 million units

A court in China recently gave its verdict on a case involving the Chinese smartphone maker Gionee. In a report published by the China Judgment Document Network, the court detailed that Gionee planted a Trojan Horse on more than 20 million devices via an app between December 2018 and October 2019.

The app was used as a tool to profit from users through unsolicited ads and other malicious activities without the users' knowledge. The Trojan Horse was implanted through a software update using the so-called "Story Lock Screen" app. The malware was planted by The Shenzhen Zhipu Technology Co. Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Gionee.

According to the report (Obtained through cnBeta.COM), the first devices infected by the "Dark Horse Program" were in December 2018 and carried out until October 2019. The company is said to have earned around USD 4.2 million for that period by infecting 26,519,921 smartphones. The estimated expenses for the same period were just a little below USD 1.3 million.

The court ruled that the defendant Shenzhen Zhipu Technology committed the crime of illegally controlling the computer information system. The defendants' Xu Li, Zhu Ying, Jia Zhengqiang, and Pan Qi were found guilty of illegally controlling the computer information system and were sentenced to three to three years and six months. In addition to being given a jail term, each of the defendants was slapped with a fine of 200,000 Yuan (Roughly USD 30,600).