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Malware on My Android Phone

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Re: Malware on My Android Phone

#171

Post by aembleton »

tjpnz wrote: post #44
TooCreative wrote: post #7

Strange article I unlocked my phone and two accidental clicks led me to agree to a dialog that my brain immediately registered as suspicious What type of dialog can pop up on your Android screen after unlocking and install "malware"? What is "malware" here? It looks like they mean an app from the play store? The next day, I picked up my phone and when I launched Chrome, I immediately noticed it was displaying a spamm…

Something similar happened to me a few years back after I accidentally tapped an ad in Chrome (an ad delivered by Google no less). While I didn't get infected the site did start displaying system like prompts (my phone was also vibrating at this point and playing the same sound I get when there's a natural disaster) saying my device was infected and that I should tap OK to download an apk. I did several things after…

How did you remove Chrome?

Re: Malware on My Android Phone

#172

Post by UncleMeat »

llarsson wrote: post #12
TooCreative wrote: post #7

Strange article I unlocked my phone and two accidental clicks led me to agree to a dialog that my brain immediately registered as suspicious What type of dialog can pop up on your Android screen after unlocking and install "malware"? What is "malware" here? It looks like they mean an app from the play store? The next day, I picked up my phone and when I launched Chrome, I immediately noticed it was displaying a spamm…

Can't an app ask for a website to be opened, and then that would cause the standard browser to display said website and URL? It does not sound to me like the Chrome app was infected, just told to open a page.

Yes this is basic (and incredibly common) behavior. The alternative is often much worse (an embedded WebView in each app to do things like open TOS pages).

Re: Malware on My Android Phone

#173

Post by gfxgirl »

pw6hv wrote: post #3

A QR code reader was the problem then... I am an Android user since the dawn of time and I was so surprised when my wife showed me that on her iPhone the QR code reader is embedded in her camera app... I wonder why it is not the same in any version of Android that I have used (now I am on Android One). This plus the native support for CardDav and CalDav are pushing me to try iOS next time I have to change my phone.

That's disappointing. Chrome on iOS also has a QR code scanner. Surprising that Chrome on Android does not

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/7862896?hl=en

Re: Malware on My Android Phone

#174

Post by chupchap »

pw6hv wrote: post #3

A QR code reader was the problem then... I am an Android user since the dawn of time and I was so surprised when my wife showed me that on her iPhone the QR code reader is embedded in her camera app... I wonder why it is not the same in any version of Android that I have used (now I am on Android One). This plus the native support for CardDav and CalDav are pushing me to try iOS next time I have to change my phone.

Take photo of the qr code with any camera and open the image in Google photos. Google lens will detect qr code and do the rest

Re: Malware on My Android Phone

#176

Post by JeremyNT »

slezyr wrote: post #49
prof18 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QR Reader are load of everything. I went mad to find one a decent one for my parents’ android phone and apparently it doesn’t exists. So in a weekend I’ve created one without any kind of tracking, ads, permission, whatever. Here it is if you guys need one -> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prof18.sec...

Or anything from FDroid. I use Barcode Scanner ( https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.google.zxing.client.andr... ) as it scans even damaged codes.

> Or anything from FDroid.

This is the best heuristic to apply not just for QR code scanning, but for pretty much everything. To avoid malware, avoid the Play Store.

When using f-droid, also check out the project web site and git repo (at least in a cursory way, even if you can't fully audit the code, you can get a sense of who the developer is and the project's overall health from the commit log and issue tracker).

Re: Malware on My Android Phone

#177

Post by literallycancer »

aembleton wrote: post #171
tjpnz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar happened to me a few years back after I accidentally tapped an ad in Chrome (an ad delivered by Google no less). While I didn't get infected the site did start displaying system like prompts (my phone was also vibrating at this point and playing the same sound I get when there's a natural disaster) saying my device was infected and that I should tap OK to download an apk. I did several things after…

How did you remove Chrome?

You can disable system apps so they don't show up even without root. If you have root you can also uninstall them. Just open a terminal, su and use pm uninstall to uninstall for your user or all users (you can reinstall the same way if you end up needing it later). No reason to use the provided Chrome when you can just use Bromite though.

Re: Malware on My Android Phone

#178

Post by swiley »

j1elo wrote: post #69

The lesson here is not "oh look the author is stupid because they installed a shitty QR scanner app and didn't notice the obvious mistake". The lesson should be; even very experienced technical people fall onto the malware trap. We all have day-to-day problems, unexpected stuff happening, in short life doing its thing. We'll inevitably end up being victims of a scam that happens just the worst possible day of them al…

IMO: the lesson here is that restricting people to the OS vendor's software repository doesn't prevent malware. The only way to even help that is via community review (note that apple doesn't review internal behavior of the apps or instrument them in any way, they just have someone try using them behind a proxy) and enforcing public available source code like fdroid.

Re: Malware on My Android Phone

#179

Post by benboozled »

JeremyNT wrote: post #176
slezyr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or anything from FDroid. I use Barcode Scanner ( https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.google.zxing.client.andr... ) as it scans even damaged codes.

> Or anything from FDroid. This is the best heuristic to apply not just for QR code scanning, but for pretty much everything. To avoid malware, avoid the Play Store. When using f-droid, also check out the project web site and git repo (at least in a cursory way, even if you can't fully audit the code, you can get a sense of who the developer is and the project's overall health from the commit log and issue tracker).

I'm largely in the dark when it comes to Android security. What makes F-Droid so much safer?

Re: Malware on My Android Phone

#180

Post by swiley »

prof18 wrote: post #13
pw6hv wrote: post #3

A QR code reader was the problem then... I am an Android user since the dawn of time and I was so surprised when my wife showed me that on her iPhone the QR code reader is embedded in her camera app... I wonder why it is not the same in any version of Android that I have used (now I am on Android One). This plus the native support for CardDav and CalDav are pushing me to try iOS next time I have to change my phone.

QR Reader are load of everything. I went mad to find one a decent one for my parents’ android phone and apparently it doesn’t exists. So in a weekend I’ve created one without any kind of tracking, ads, permission, whatever. Here it is if you guys need one -> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prof18.sec...

What happened to the zebra crossing demo app? That's what I always used when I had android.
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