Security News > 2020 > April > Unveiled: How xHelper Android Malware Re-Installs Even After Factory Reset

A mysterious piece of Android malware that re-installs itself on infected devices even after users delete it or factory reset their devices-making it nearly impossible to remove.

xHelper reportedly infected over 45,000 devices last year, and since then, cybersecurity researchers have been trying to unfold how the malware survives factory reset and how it infected so many devices in the first place.

In a blog post published today, Igor Golovin, malware analyst at Kaspersky, finally solved the mystery by unveiling technical details on the persistence mechanism used by this malware, and eventually also figured out how to remove xHelper from an infected device completely.

"The malware installs a backdoor with the ability to execute commands as a superuser. It provides the attackers with full access to all app data and can be used by other malware, too, for example, CookieThief."

According to Kaspersky, replacing the modified library with the one from the original firmware for your Android smartphone could re-enable mounting system partition in the write-mode to permanently remove xHelper Android malware.

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