Millions of Android Phones and TVs May Come with Preinstalled Malware

'Multiple lines of Android devices came with preinstalled malware,' reports Ars Technica, 'that couldn't be removed without users taking heroic measures.'

Their article cites two reports released Thursday — one from Trend Micro and one from TechCrunch:
Trend Micro researchers following up on a presentation delivered at the Black Hat security conference in Singapore reported that as many as 8.9 million phones comprising as many as 50 different brands were infected with malware... ['It's highly likely that more devices have been preinfected,' the report clarified, 'but have not exchanged communication with the Command & Control server, have not been used or activated by the threat actor, or have yet to be distributed to the targeted country or market... The threat actor has spread this malware over the last five years. ']

'Guerrilla' opens a backdoor that causes infected devices to regularly communicate with a remote command-and-control server to check if there are any new malicious updates for them to install. These malicious updates collect data about the users that the threat actor, which Trend Micro calls the Lemon Group, can sell to advertisers. Guerrilla then surreptitiously installs aggressive ad platforms that can deplete battery reserves and degrade the user experience... Guerrilla is a massive platform with nearly a dozen plugins that can hijack users' WhatsApp sessions to send unwanted messages, establish a reverse proxy from an infected phone to use the network resources of the affected mobile device, and inject ads into legitimate apps...

TechCrunch detailed several lines of Android-based TV boxes sold through Amazon that are laced with malware. The TV boxes, reported to be T95 models with an h616, report to a command-and-control server that, just like the Guerrilla servers, can install any application the malware creators want. The default malware preinstalled on the boxes is known as a clickbot. It generates advertising revenue by surreptitiously tapping on ads in the background...

Android devices that come with malware straight out of the factory box are, unfortunately, nothing new. Ars has reported on such incidents at least five times in recent years (here, here, here, here, and here). All the affected models were in the budget tier.
People in the market for an Android phone should steer toward known brands like Samsung, Asus, or OnePlus, which generally have much more reliable quality assurance controls on their inventory. To date, there have never been reports of higher-end Android devices coming with malware preinstalled. There are similarly no such reports for iPhones.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.