UC Browser is a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

developed by mobile internet company UCWeb, a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group. It was the most popular mobile browser in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

and

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

, and the second most popular one in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

as of 2017. Its world-wide browser share as of May 2022 is 0.86% overall (and 1.48% on smartphones) according to StatCounter. Originally launched in April 2004 as a

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

-only

application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

, it is now available on a number of platforms including Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS,

Java ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of portable code for embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, TV set-top ...

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

. It has been the subject of several

security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...

and

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of ...

controversies, and was banned in India on June 29, 2020, shortly after the 2020–2022 China–India skirmishes started.

Functionality

UC Browser is a cross-platform

primarily targeted at mobile phones. It is known for its small app size and

data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressio ...

technology, making it popular in

emerging market An emerging market (or an emerging country or an emerging economy) is a market that has some characteristics of a developed market, but does not fully meet its standards. This includes markets that may become developed markets in the future or wer ...

s where people tend to have mobile phones with more limited device memory and internet bandwidth. In particular, the browser is unique in its use of

proxy server In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource. Instead of connecting directly to a server that can fulfill a reques ...

s, which run data through UCWeb servers before sending it to the user's device, enabling data compression but also posing privacy risks. Additional features of the browser include

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

acceleration, multi-file format downloading,

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

web app and cloud syncing features, and "fast download", a feature that downloads files in multiple parts simultaneously.

Platforms

UC Browser is available as both an Android app and an iOS app, and is also available on several other older or discontinued mobile operating systems including BlackBerry OS,

, and

. While primarily a mobile app, UCWeb also offers a

desktop version (there is no

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

version).

Data compression

UC Browser uses

s to compress web pages before sending them to users. This process requires less memory on the user's device and lowers data costs; however, it also poses privacy and security risks as all of the data accessed by the user through UC Browser first runs through a UCWeb server, rather than going directly to the user's device.

UC+: HTML5, WebApp and add-ons

In July 2013, UCWeb announced the UC+ Open Platform. The platform consists of a WebApp store, an add-on platform and an Application Bookmark Platform. It went live with the launch of UC Browser v9.2 for Android. Developers can use a provided SDK to create programs that the browser runs in different scenarios. Users can download and install them from the browser's add-on panel. Examples include sharing to

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social me ...

, webpage translation, augmented reality, and voice control. The Application Bookmark Platform allows partner websites to put up a

QR code A QR code (an initialism for quick response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) invented in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that can contain information about t ...

on UC Browser for users to scan, which adds the webpage to their bookmarks. This platform was among the first in China.

Download management

The browser supports simultaneous downloads and includes a download manager, including pages for offline reading. It supports pausing and resuming downloads. The current version of the download manager has features designed to solve common problems while downloading, such as an intermittent internet connection and mislabeled files. The download process can continue after the app is closed, and can also automatically resume if the download is interrupted. The download manager sorts downloaded files by type and places them in respective folders.

Cloud system

UCWeb claims that the cloud system used by the browser tends to fetch data from the closest servers available, making the loading process quicker and smoother for users.

Privacy and security

Privacy

Leaked NSA reports

In May 2015,

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

(NSA) documents leaked by whistleblower

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

indicated that UC Browser leaks sensitive data like international mobile subscriber identities, international mobile station equipment identities, MSISDN's, Android ID's,

MAC address A media access control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. This use is common in most IEEE 802 networking te ...

es, and geolocation and

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

-related data without any encryption. These leaks were used by intelligence agencies to track users. The documents also revealed that the

Australian Signals Directorate Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), formerly the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) is the federal statutory agency in the Australian Government responsible for foreign signals intelligence, support to military operations, cyber warfare, and i ...

(ASD) had identified UC Browser as a security weak point. Its widespread use in China, India and Indonesia made it particularly attractive to ASD. The documents revealed that in cooperation with its

Five Eyes The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in sig ...

partners, ASD hacked the UC Browser and infected smartphones with spyware. The ASD declined to comment in relation to the revelations.

Citizen Lab report

In May 2015,

Citizen Lab The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, Canada. It was founded by Ronald Deibert in 2001. The laboratory studies information controls that impact the openness ...

, a laboratory based at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, published a report finding numerous privacy and security issues with both the English language and Chinese language editions of the Android version of UC Browser. The report criticized the transmission of

personally identifiable information Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates ha ...

to various commercial analytics tools and the transmission of user search queries without encryption. They also managed to bypass the encryption of UC Browser, leading them to accuse UCWeb of using non-effective encryption systems to transmit personally identifiable subscriber data, mobile device identifiers, and user geolocation data. In May 2016, Alibaba Group provided Citizen Lab with updated versions of UC Browser in order to verify their security fixes to these issues. The subsequent update published by Citizen Lab indicated that not all of the previously identified data leaks and privacy breaches had been fixed in UC Browser.

C-DAC Hyderabad ,
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
investigation

After the release of the Citizen Lab report, the

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is an Indian autonomous scientific society, operating under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. History CDAC was created in November 1987, initially as the Centre ...

(C-DAC),

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern Indi ...

a scientific research unit within India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) GoI , began a technical investigation into the "several major privacy and security vulnerabilities that would seriously expose users of UC Browser to surveillance and other privacy violations" alleged in the report. C-DAC found that the browser (which was the second-most-used browser in India) had been sending user data to Chinese servers and that it retains control over a user's device DNS even after the browser is deleted. UC Browser is banned in India.

Security

In March 2019, analysts at the anti-malware firm Doctor Web publicly disclosed that UC Browser and UC Browser Mini for Android was downloading and installing extra modules from the company's own servers via an unprotected

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

channel. This exposed browser users to arbitrary remote code execution if an attacker was able to perform a

man-in-the-middle attack In cryptography and computer security, a man-in-the-middle, monster-in-the-middle, machine-in-the-middle, monkey-in-the-middle, meddler-in-the-middle, manipulator-in-the-middle (MITM), person-in-the-middle (PITM) or adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) ...

to deliver malicious module (but no cases of exploitation were publicly disclosed). Furthermore, this violates

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating sy ...

policies that forbid Google Play apps from downloading any executable code from any sources outside of Google Play. In June 2020, a new version of its UC browser was added to the Google Play store with updated settings that comply with the store's security guidelines. According to tests on Qualys, a

cloud security Cloud computing security or, more simply, cloud security refers to a broad set of policies, technologies, applications, and controls utilized to protect virtualized IP, data, applications, services, and the associated infrastructure of cloud co ...

firm, and

High-Tech Bridge ImmuniWeb is a global application security company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. ImmuniWeb develops Machine Learning and AI technologies for SaaS-based application security solutions provided via its proprietary ImmuniWeb AI Platform. Ear ...

, an internet security firm, UC Browser contains

Logjam A log jam is a naturally occurring phenomenon characterized by a dense accumulation of tree trunks and pieces of large wood across a vast section of a river, stream, or lake. ("Large wood" is commonly defined as pieces of wood more than in diame ...

FREAK A freak is a person who is physically deformed or transformed due to an extraordinary medical condition or body modification. This definition was first attested with this meaning in the 1880s as a shorter form of the phrase "freak of nature" ...

, and

POODLE The Poodle, called the Pudel in German and the Caniche in French, is a breed of water dog. The breed is divided into four varieties based on size, the Standard Poodle, Medium Poodle, Miniature Poodle and Toy Poodle, although the Medium Poodle var ...

vulnerabilities. UC Browser also uses an outdated

RC4 In cryptography, RC4 (Rivest Cipher 4, also known as ARC4 or ARCFOUR, meaning Alleged RC4, see below) is a stream cipher. While it is remarkable for its simplicity and speed in software, multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in RC4, ren ...

cipher cryptography with deprecated SSL 3 or even SSL 2 protocols, which have many security flaws. In May 2019, Indian security researcher Arif Khan reported that the URL address bars on the UC Browser and UC Browser Mini apps were susceptible to URL spoofing.

iOS incognito mode data harvesting

In June 2021, it was discovered that the app is recording user data, sending IP addresses to Alibaba servers.

Market adoption

UC Browser gained significant popularity in China, India, and Indonesia in 2012 through 2017 and still retains some popularity in China. In October 2012, UC Browser topped

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

's free Android app download category in India for the first time. Google Zeitgeist 2013 showed that the "Most Searched Mobile Apps" in India were dominated by messaging and browsing apps, with WhatsApp and UC Browser topping the rankings for the most searches on mobile in 2013. As of March 2014, UC Browser had over 500 million users, largely in China, India, and Indonesia, and as of 2016 it had more than 100 million monthly

active users Active users is a measurement metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from visitors within a relevant range of time (daily, weekly and m ...

. According to the app analytics firm App Annie, UC Browser was the 8th most downloaded mobile app of the 2010–2019 decade. However, according to independent web analytics firm StatCounter, UC Browser had never been the leading browser in China and had never exceeded 20% browser share there. As of March 2021, Google Chrome had 43% browser share, while UC Browser had 18%. In India UC Browser was the leading browser from October 2013 through June 2017, peaking at 46% browser share. As of March 2021, Google Chrome had 85% browser share, while UC Browser had 4.3% share. In Indonesia UC Browser was the leading browser from July 2015 much of the time until March 2017, peaking at 51% browser share. As of March 2021, Google Chrome had 81% browser share, while UC Browser had 1.9% share. The number of users of UC Browser may be significantly affected by the May 2020 recommendation by India's

National Security Council A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a n ...

following the 2020 China–India skirmishes that UC Browser and other Chinese-owned apps be blocked due to cyber-security concerns.

History

UC Browser was initially launched in April 2004 as a

J2ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of portable code for embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, TV set-to ...

-only

. The logo of UC Browser was redesigned in 2012, from a cartoon squirrel to a more abstract and stylized squirrel that's more in line with American designs. In May 2013, UCWeb customized its browser for

Vodafone Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vod ...

's Indian customers. In August 2013, UC Browser provided distribution channels of companies like AppURL Initiative and partnered with distributor

Gameloft Gameloft SE is a French video game publisher based in Paris, founded in December 1999 by Ubisoft co-founder Michel Guillemot. The company operates 18 development studios worldwide, and publishes games with a special focus on the mobile games ma ...

to sell its products. In 2013 also it announced a partnership with

Trend Micro is an American-Japanese multinational cyber security software company with global headquarters in Tokyo, Japan and Irving, Texas, United State.Other regional headquarters and R&D centers are located around East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and ...

, under which both companies worked to provide mobile web safety assessments in the browser.

Ban in India

On June 26, 2020, the

Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

banned UC Browser, along with 58 other Chinese apps such as

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version o ...

and

WeChat WeChat () is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has b ...

, citing data and privacy issues and claiming that it is a "threat to the

sovereignty Sovereignty is the defining authority within individual consciousness, social construct, or territory. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within the state, as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the perso ...

and integrity" of the country. Many experts believe that the move was a retaliation to the 2020 China–India skirmishes between India and China.

Ban in China

In March 2021 the browser was removed from several Chinese app stores over a complaint that it was selling misleading medical adverts when searching for hospitals in the browser. It was still available on Apple Inc's Chinese app store.

References

{{Web browsers Java device platform Java platform software Mobile web browsers Android web browsers IOS web browsers Windows Phone software Symbian software 2004 software Alibaba Group Internet censorship in India