Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus said on Tuesday that it will fix a security flaw appearing in many of its phones, including the OnePlus 5, over the past few years. Users have discovered that many of the company’s phones have a pre-installed Qualcomm testing app called EngineerMode that allows root-level access to the phone without having to unlock its bootloader, Engadget reported.
The multinational technology blog network said that the app remains hidden until a user asks Android to show the apps installed in the system. However, if another person has physical access to the phone, he could compromise its security by inserting trackers, using the EngineerMode app.
OnePlus issued a statement on Tuesday promising to remove the root function from the EngineerMode app. “EngineerMode is a diagnostic tool mainly used for factory production line functionality testing and after sales support,” the company said. “We’ve seen several statements by community developers that are worried because this application package file grants root privileges....while we don’t see this as a major security issue, we understand that users may still have concerns and will remove the root function from EngineerMode in an upcoming update.”
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