How The Android Malware That Survives Factory Reset Works

submitted by LarrySwinger2 from fossbytes.com

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[–]AntiLowEffortHuman 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Holy shit! How does it gain root access that easily? I was not able to root my Huawei no matter what I did. Finally I fucked up and dropped it while riding a scooter. So it's screen cracked before its root protection. I'd love to see if this malware is able to root that thing.

[–]LarrySwinger2[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I suppose it depends on what model phone you have. I don't think it can root my BlackBerry Priv either. But from what I understand, you can root other phones simply by installing and running an app. If the virus gets installed, it should be able to do the same.

[–]AntiLowEffortHuman 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah I guess. Had a shitty older Chinese Mediatek phone. Was 16-17 at the time with no mobile internet and wanted to hack wifi networks, so used the easiest method to root. an app named Kingroot did it within seconds. The things the phone and i went through... Sigh. good times.

I wonder if it is this easy on desktop distros of linux? It requires a password, yes, but i hope there are no vulnerabilities.

[–]jmichaelhudsondotnet 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

tl:dr It works by the company who built the hardware designing the phones primarily for surveillance and secondarily for everything else, knowing full well you are going to try to not be tracked, and intending from the very beginning to thwart your attempts not to be tracked

"how does it gain root access that easily"

answer: you get a big advantage if you designed and constructed the device, and a bigger disadvantage if you did not yet are too unintelligent not to realize your disadvantage or the true nature of your adversary due to their ubiquitous advertising campaign

[–]LarrySwinger2[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Not a representative tl;dr. It is indeed curious that it comes back on cheap Chinese phones even after reflashing the default ROM. But the article doesn't say it primarily relies on manufacturers installing backdoors. It also affects phones that are not backdoored, and on those, reflashing will remove it. And anyway, the article is so short that it doesn't need a tl;dr.