There have been many issues with malware infecting apps that are available at the Google Play Store. People will then download these apps to their Android devices and unknowingly get infected with the malware in the process. This has been an ongoing problem for a very long time. Many solutions have been devised. However, none have been proven to be effective as of yet. Cybersecurity company Malwarebytes recently discovered an issue where even the performing of a factory reset of an Android device does not get rid of the malware completely. There is a trojan for Android devices that is known as the xHelper. It can reinstall itself after it is removed with a factory reset. The owner of the device is none the wiser.
Once the xHelper trojan is installed on an Android device, it is capable of receiving commands remotely. It will then download more malware into the Android device. The bad news is that xHelper will keep coming back again and again. It does not matter how many times it is removed. It is a huge problem that Android’s parent company Google does not seem to have a solution for at the present time. To make matters worse, it seems that the xHelper trojan is still evolving. This means it will reinstall itself much faster than before after it has been removed from an Android device.
People who work in the cybersecurity field have called the xHelper trojan the next generation of malware. This is because a factory reset has always been a totally effective method to wipe out any malware that was infecting any type of device. It is always the last option because a factory reset will also wipe out much of the other data on a device. However, xHelper has shown to be resilient in a way that no previous forms of malware has been. It is able to survive a factory reset. This was heretofore unheard of in the world of cybersecurity.
It remains to be seen how Google will deal with the xHelper trojan. It will eventually hurt their business if Android users are having their devices infected. A solution will need to be devised very soon. Android users are already becoming reluctant to download apps from the Google Play Store. There is no question that hackers are getting smarter all the time. Prehaps that the genius of the hackers has finally surpassed the genius of Google tech experts.
