Android with pre-installed malware, from the factory

“Many lines of devices Android come with pre-installed malware”, he says Ars Technica, "which cannot be removed unless users take bold measures."

Their article cites two reports released Thursday — one from Trend Micro and one from TechCrunch:

The researchers of Trend Micro who attended a presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Singapore reported that up to 8,9 million phones spanning up to 50 different brands were infected with malware…

“It is highly likely that more devices were released infected,” the report clarifies, “but have not initiated communication with the Command & Control server, been used or activated by the malicious users, or have not yet been distributed to the target country or market... This the malware has been circulating for the past five years.”

The "Guerrilla” opens a backdoor that forces infected devices to regularly communicate with a remote Command & Control server to check for new malicious updates to install.

These malicious updates collect user data that can be sold to advertisers by a group Trend Micro calls the Lemon Group.

Guerrilla then secretly installs aggressive ad platforms that can drain your battery reserves.

Guerrilla is a huge platform with almost a dozen plugins that can hack users' WhatsApp sessions to send spam, create a reverse proxy from an infected phone to use the network resources of the affected mobile device, and add ads to legitimate apps…

TechCrunch he published many TVs running Android are full of malware. TV box, listed like T95 models with h616, send information to a Command & Control server that can install any application the malware creators want software. The pre-installed malware is known as a clickbot. It generates advertising revenue by secretly showing ads in the background.

Android devices coming with malware right out of the box is unfortunately nothing new. Ars has reported at least five such incidents in recent years (here, here, here, hereAnd here).

If you want to buy an Android you should look for the well-known brands like Samsung, Asus or OnePlus, which generally have much more reliable quality assurance checks. To date, there have never been any reports of high-end Android devices coming with malware pre-installed.