LZ Play's Mate 30 Backdoor!
Huawei launched its new flagship phone, the Mate 30, last week. It was the first Huawei phone to be delivered without Google services, after the U.S. company was prohibited from working with the Chinese phone maker. Before the launch, a Huawei executive said there would be a workaround that allowed users to download Google apps. Sure enough, a workaround existed: a third-party app called LZ Play allowed Mate 30 users to download Google services but the app was deleted after a researcher discovered LZ Play had access to undisclosed Huawei APIs. Huawei denies any involvement with LZ Play. (Fortune)
A workaround that enabled Huawei's Mate 30 devices to install Google's Play Store and other apps has been shut down. LZ Play, an app that promised to allow users to run the apps they know and love, has been taken down after a researcher found it harnessed secret Huawei APIs. Subsequently, Google removed the phone from its SafetyNet system, essentially a list of trusted devices that could access Google services.
U.S. and China are growing further apart. FT reports that Chinese venture capital funding into the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level since 2015. In the first nine months of the year, Chinese VCs invested just $4 billion in U.S. companies, down from $7 billion in the same time frame last year and from $9 billion over the first nine months in 2017. Chinese FDI in the U.S. fell too, slumping from $29 billion in 2017 to $5.4 billion last year.