The story is nothing new: some of our readers will surely remember the Superfish scandal that affected Lenovo laptops, and Sony's rootkit in its CDs marked an entire generation. However, now we find a sort of repetition hidden in the new wave of Mini PCs coming from the East. The Net Guy Reviews on YouTube recently analyzed an AceMagic AD08, and what he discovered in the Windows recovery section could scare anyone.
Of course, the idea is not to start any witch hunt. Putting all companies in the same bag is irresponsible at least, but the suspicion that some products come with 'extras' at the software level will never completely disappear, and the situation experienced by The Net Guy Reviews confirms it. What exactly happened?
Factory Spyware on a Mini PC
The Net Guy Reviews received an AceMagic AD08 for review. The specifications are very interesting: an Intel Core i9-11900H processor, 16 GB of DDR4 memory, a 512-gigabyte NVMe, WiFi 6, gigabit Ethernet, three video outputs with 4K support, and a USB-C port. The original plan was to evaluate its performance via streaming playing the remake of The Oregon Trail. Trying to save some time, The Net Guy used his Google Workspace credential and entered his local WiFi data to start downloading everything he needed. And the process went smoothly... until Windows Defender said otherwise.
The first warning reported the presence of Bladabindi!ml (backdoor), while the second (backed by a full scan of the entire drive) pointed to RedLine!MSR (infostealer). In an attempt to rule out a false positive, The Net Guy uploaded the files to VirusTotal... and it lit up like a Christmas tree (50/70). Added to this were reports from buyers on Amazon who warned about the presence of malware, and the analysis of other models (AceMagic AD15 and S1) that also came with a 'dirty' installation.
The good news is that the company's new units seem to be clean. The bad news is that their official response was quite poor, and it still doesn't inspire much confidence (offering drivers in a Google Drive folder says it all). In short, the same recommendation as always: In case of any doubt, the diplomacy of Lieutenant Ripley never fails. It's frustrating to have to reinstall Windows on new computers, but the alternative is much worse.
