Today i am going to discuss most famous and less discussed problem in android smart phones, specially those phones running older versions of android (JELLYBEAN, ICS ,KITKAT). as these versions were less secure viruses used to penetrate in system drive and reside there forever.

i have not personally met this problem, but few of my colleagues asked for help on this issue, and i have advised them following things, which didn’t worked.

Image credits @ Fireeye

What i have already tried

• Reinstall/flash firmware
• install good antivirus/malware
• change gmail password
• scan sd card with PC antivirus
• used ghost push antivirus
• used monkey virus removal tool

but none of these methods worked.

few days back one of my close friend told me that random adult apps / ads keep popping on his phone which is very embarrassing. sometime phone hangs, becomes totally useless. it was a Samsung phone. and i decided to fight this issue and found the root cause.

What is root cause?

i did some research on this topic and found most detailed information on fireeye blog which is a security company. according to this post, a Chinese advertising company NGE Mobi/Xinyinhe allegedly spreading malware / adware on android devices, and in result they provide guaranteed clicks to their advertisers. and it may cause swear privacy threats for you.

How to resolve?

after trying lots of antiviruses , anti malware and flashing firmware /rom . I came to this conclusion that only possible solutions is to completely formatting EMMC drive of phone. And it worked for me and it should work for everyone.

Formatting you emmc will remove everything from your ROM.

Steps:

• make sure that stock firmware is available for your phone. and you have complete knowledge of how to install it on phone. otherwise don’t even think to proceed further
• Don’t backup anything except contacts/sms. nothing from gallery, viruses also reside in those folders.
• Find custom recovery for your phone (installing recovery which is not compatible with your phone may brick your device)
• Install custom recovery on your phone and enter in recovery mode
• Format/wipe every partition on your phone, as shown in image below.

Random apps keep installing

Once you have formatted, flash / install stock firmware of your phone. and it will be working efficiently.

Note: if you can not find custom recovery for your phone, please write in comments and i will try my best to provide you the download link.  more over i don’t take any responsibility if you brick your phone by mistake.