Troubleshoot Is it a virus?

Tarlar

New Member
Thread author
Jun 28, 2018
1
Is Mlhiw a virus? I'd never noticed it before until my android device started downloading loads of things. Games, adds, screen changing, pop ups Turn off WI-FI, uninstall all apps, factory reset. Turn WI-FI back on, all starts again. Screen goes black, Mlhiw shows in top left hand corner for about 5 seconds, screen goes back to normal.
 

BoraMurdar

Community Manager
Verified
Staff Member
Well-known
Aug 30, 2012
6,598
Is Mlhiw a virus? I'd never noticed it before until my android device started downloading loads of things. Games, adds, screen changing, pop ups Turn off WI-FI, uninstall all apps, factory reset. Turn WI-FI back on, all starts again. Screen goes black, Mlhiw shows in top left hand corner for about 5 seconds, screen goes back to normal.
Hello,
Please open a new thread here
Malware Removal Assistance For Mobile
 

lowdetection

Level 7
Verified
Well-known
Jul 1, 2017
317
Some Chinese Manufacturers, are known for preload software inside the ROM of some devices that revelead to be "shady", personally I will try to look at the traffic generated by such apps to see what they send/receive, or run something like funnycat virustotal on your device.

Some samples, given the complexity of their design, require malware analysts, anyway if you can isolate the suspect android package and submit it to hybrid-analysis will surely give you more information doing an android static/dynamic analysis.
 

lowdetection

Level 7
Verified
Well-known
Jul 1, 2017
317
From your description, this maybe helpful for you:

How do I fix malware installed automatically in the /system directory?.



Factory reset, will be useless for you, the culprit/culprits are still there, and they start act probably as soon as they have some wifi/data connection for doing their "job".

One way is the one told in the first link, will require root permissions, personally in this case I will do all offline on a factory reset phone, then after root you will need to analyze those packages, maybe one by one, if the intention is keeping that phone as holder of your info, maybe not the only one having your info right now.

Sadly, the "advertised economic price" is compensated by such behaviors, developers of custom rom usually stay away from such devices, but if there is a custom rom use that.
 
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RoboMan

Level 34
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
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Jun 24, 2016
2,399
My dad got a chinese phone with the same issue, not even factory reset would solve. This is what I did to "solve it":
  1. Install NoRoot Firewall
  2. Install Sophos Antivirus for Mobile
Denied internet access to every single app that demanded it, except WhatsApp, Chrome, Sophos, and apps that you strictly need and know what they are. I then scanned the device with Sophos and deleted every existing malicious app.

Of course, since it was factory based, some malicious apps couldn't be deleted. But I did delete everything these apps downloaded and I denied access to such factory apps, so they couldn't download anything. Problem solved.
 

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