Stealthy new Android malware poses as ad blocker, serves up ads instead
Found on Malwarebytes on Sunday, 17 November 2019
This nasty piece of mobile malware cleverly hides itself on Android devices while serving up a host of advertisements: full-page ads, ads delivered when opening the default browser, ads in the notifications, and even ads via home screen widget. All while, ironically, posing as an ad blocker vaguely named Ads Blocker.
Ads Blocker is inordinately hard to find on the mobile device once installed. To start, there is no icon for Ads Blocker. However, there are some hints of its existence, for example, a small key icon status bar.
All this mess only exists because the advertising business has gone out of control. They pay for all sorts of ads, no matter how annoying they are, no matter how illegally they are served. It would be great if users could so the company behind the advertised product if their ad was served via malware.