Adam Horvath's blog

I’ve recently purchased a Lenovo K3 Note from Gearbest and it came with preinstalled malware and bloatware. Here are the things I had to do to bring the phone into a usable state. Root it Lot of the malware was preinstalled system apps which cannot be removed without root mode. I’ve rooted using the CWM (ClockworkMod) method , installing the CWM recovery image then installing SuperSU. The KingRoot method should be easier but didn’t work for me. Remove apps - Bloatware I’ve used Titanium Backup because I wasn’t sure which app would break the phone if removed. I removed the following preinstalled apps (that I remember): BSPTelephonyDevTool 1.0 DU Batter Saver 3.9.9 DU Speed Booster 1.4.0 Mcube Mobile Assistant 3.0.4.0835 Power Manager 1.1.287.150113.c3631eb SYNCit 4.0.54 Theme Center 2.70… UPDATE: needed for ringtone selection User Experience 4.4.1 Remove apps – Malware that was display popup ads The malware that was hijacking my browser was hidden in a modi...

The browser hijack style malware is getting pretty widespread on Android devices, especially the cheaper ones that can be purchased directly from overseas and come with pre-installed malware. Let’s see how to find the adware app that is causing the issue. The symptom is usually the same: when the web browser is opened it is redirected to an unknown webpage advertising something totally useless. In some cases a virus infected APK Android package gets downloaded in the hope that it will get installed. The app that is causing this issue is waiting in the background for the browser process (either Chrome or Android Browser) to start. When it does it asks it right away to display a webpage. The intent Android natively supports communication between apps, which in itself is very useful, for instance a webpage can be opened from the email client. The code is pretty straightforward too: Uri webpage = Uri.parse(url);     Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, web...