Android smartphones are infected with the “immortal” Xhelper Trojan. Even resetting to factory settings does not help

Symantec specialists report a new malware called Xhelper, which is swift

infect Android devices at a pace.

What it is

The virus was first noticed in March this year, and withsince then he has significantly “strengthened”. Sources of infection are redirects and suspicious sites that redirect users to pages with Android applications. Once launched, the malware is registered as the main service, thereby reducing the risk of shutdown due to low memory.

Xhelper's goal is simple: it turns any model into a Xiaomi smartphone, floods the user with advertising and spam. All roads lead to the Play Store, from where it is proposed to install different applications. From each download, Xhelper developers are “dripping” interest.

According to experts, the trojan has already infected about 45 thousand smartphones and monthly adds 2400 devices to this number. Most of them are in India, the USA and Russia.

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What to do with it

Uninstalling Xhelper is not possible because it installs itself as a separate standalone service. Neither removal in OS settings, nor even reset to factory settings helps.

Unfortunately, it has not yet been possible to determine the distribution channels of the malware. But it turned out that Xhelper infects only certain brands of smartphones. Which ones are not specified.