Qihoo 360 (; approximate pronunciation CHEE-hoo), full name 360 Security Technology Inc., is a Chinese internet security company that has developed the

antivirus software Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware. Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the name ...

programs

360 Safeguard 360 Total Security, or its Chinese version, 360 Safeguard (), is an antivirus software Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware. Antivi ...

and 360 Mobile Safe, the Web browser

360 Secure Browser 360 Secure Browser (360 Security Browser) or 360 Safe Browser ( zh, s=360安全浏览器) is a web browser developed by the Qihoo company of Beijing, China. Version 1.0 was released in July 2008 (first non-beta release; first beta in changelo ...

, and the mobile application store 360 Mobile Assistant. It was founded by

Zhou Hongyi Zhou Hongyi (; born 4 October 1970) is a Chinese billionaire entrepreneur. He is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of the Internet security company Qihoo 360. As of November 2018, he is ranked #45 on Forbes China Rich List 2018 and #135 on Forbes ...

and Qi Xiangdong in June 2005. The company's head office is in

Chaoyang District, Beijing Chaoyang District () is an urban list of administrative divisions of Beijing, district of Beijing. It borders the districts of Shunyi, Beijing, Shunyi to the northeast, Tongzhou, Beijing, Tongzhou to the east and southeast, Daxing, Beijing, Daxin ...

History

In the summer of 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

market by launching the Battleship phone together with the large Chinese electronics company

Haier Haier Group Corporation () is a Chinese multinational home appliances and consumer electronics company headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong. Its Haier Smart Home Company affiliate, of which it owns 35%, designs, develops, manufactures and se ...

. Qihoo 360 stated that Haier will provide the hardware while Qihoo 360 will focus on customising the software, albeit the main operating system will be Android. Qihoo 360 received over 220,000 pre-orders for the phone the first day. Later in 2012, Qihoo 360 launched the search engine so.com, thereby directly competing with

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

, the most prominent search engine in China. Qihoo's share of unique visitors grew to 10.52% of the total search engine market in China. At the end of July 2013, Qihoo was in early talks to acquire Sohu.com’s Sogou.com search engine for around $1.4 billion. In early 2015, Qihoo rebranded its so.com search engine as haosou.com. "Hao" in Chinese means good; Haosou directly translated to English means "good search engine". In December 2013, the company increased its stake in the Brazilian tech company PSafe. On July 11, 2014, the company set up a

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

fund in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

. On December 18, 2015, Qihoo 360 agreed to be acquired by a group of investors in a deal valued at about $9.3 billion. On July 18, 2016, Qihoo 360 bought most of

Opera Software Opera (formerly Opera Software AS) is a Norwegian multinational technology corporation headquartered in Oslo, Norway with additional offices in European Union, Europe, China, and Africa. Opera offers a range of products and services that inclu ...

for US$600 million. In 2018, Qihoo 360 invested in Shanghai-based i-Soon.

U.S. sanctions

In May 2020, Qihoo 360 and other Chinese companies were placed on the

Bureau of Industry and Security The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce that deals with issues involving national security and high technology. A principal goal for the bureau is helping stop the proliferation of weap ...

Entity List The Entity List is a trade restriction list published by the United States Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), consisting of certain foreign persons, entities, or governments. It is published as Supplement 4 of Part ...

due to U.S. national security concerns. The U.S. accused Qihoo 360 and others of playing roles in the crackdown in

Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...

by "enabling China’s high-technology surveillance" in Xinjiang. On 25 May, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman

Zhao Lijian Zhao Lijian (; born 10 November 1972) is a Chinese civil servant who has been serving as deputy director of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China since January 2023. He joined the foreign serv ...

strongly criticized the step, asking the US to "revoke the relevant decision and stop interfering in China’s internal affairs". In October 2022, the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...

added Qihoo 360 to a list of "Chinese military companies" operating in the U.S.

Controversies

Lawsuits

Qihoo has been described by

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

as a confrontational and litigious company due to its involvement in various anti-competition lawsuits. The company was involved in lawsuits with

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimed ...

, starting with the 360 v. Tencent dispute, as well as other companies such as

, Emiage, and

Sogou Sogou, Inc. () is a Chinese technology company and subsidiary of Tencent. The offices of Sogou are located in Beijing on the southeast corner of Tsinghua University. Sogou also has offices in Chengdu, co-located within Tencent's office build ...

Traffic data

The company has been accused by

Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

of overstating the volume of traffic to its site to attract advertisers.

Antivirus test results

The antivirus testing companies AV-Comparatives of Austria, Germany's AV-Test, and Virus Bulletin of the UK have accused Qihoo of providing for testing its anti-virus equipped with a

Bitdefender Bitdefender is a multinational cybersecurity technology company dual-headquartered in Bucharest, Romania and Santa Clara, California, with offices in the United States, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. The company was founded in 2001 by c ...

engine, while the consumer version uses Qihoo's own QVM engine.

Certificates

According to documents released by the

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of open-source developers, s ...

in 2016, Qihoo appears to have acquired a controlling interest in the previously Israeli-run Certificate Authority " StartCom", through a chain of acquisitions, including the Chinese-owned company WoSign. WoSign also has a certificate authority business; WoSign has been accused of poor control and of misissuing certificates. Furthermore, Mozilla alleges that WoSign and StartCom violate their obligations as Certificate Authorities in respect of their failure to disclose the change in ownership of StartCom; Mozilla is threatening to take action, to protect their users. Google have stated that their Chrome product will no longer trust by default any certificates signed by StartCom or Wosign roots, starting with Chrome 61. Mozilla have stated that their

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

product will no longer trust by default any certificates signed by StartCom or WoSign roots, starting with Firefox version 58.

Hidden backdoors

In 2012, a whistleblower reported a hidden backdoor in 360 Secure Browser. The Product Director of 360 Secure Browser, Tao Weihua, responded that "Whoever has a mind to beat a dog will always be able to find a stick" and accused the whistleblower of "smearing 360 on behalf of Baidu", which the whistleblower said was "the worst professional response in history". Independent analysis of the claim showed that the browser has an "undeclared mechanism (i.e., via ExtSmartWiz.dll) which regularly connects to the server (e.g., every 5 minutes), and allows it to download files of any type (including executables) from the server." In October 2020,

Mnemonic A mnemonic device ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember. It makes use of e ...

reported the existence of a backdoor affecting a line of children's watches under the Xplora brand manufactured by Qihoo.

Widespread streaming webcasts of security footage in China

In December 2017, the Chinese Government acted to curtail the widespread webcasting of live security-company-cameras, private webcams, and

IP camera An Internet Protocol camera, or IP camera, is a type of digital video camera that receives control data and sends image data via an IP network. They are commonly used for surveillance, but, unlike analog closed-circuit television (CCTV) came ...

footage, voicing concerns of violations of privacy and portrait rights, sanctioning Qihoo.

Samsung spyware

In January 2020, a

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

user reported ''Qihoo'''s presence in

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

mobile phones as a pre-installed storage cleaner in the device settings, from where it sends data packages to Chinese servers. The user could not identify which information is sent specifically. Later,

representative declared that the only data sent back to Qihoo is generic information needed to optimize storage — specifically naming OS version, phone model, and storage capacity, among other data. Qihoo's main contribution is a reference library for identifying junk files, but that library is stored locally in the utility, and Qihoo never receives data that would allow it to identify a particular file on a user's device.

National Business Daily lawsuit

References

External links

* {{Antivirus software Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange Computer security software companies Software companies based in Beijing Chinese companies established in 2005 Software companies established in 2005 Chinese brands Chaoyang District, Beijing 2011 initial public offerings 2016 mergers and acquisitions 2005 establishments in Beijing