Soluții

How to Stop Octo Malware From Remotely Accessing Your Android

There’s a new strain of malware floating around the internet, and it’s looking to control your Android device. Once installed, “Octo,” as it’s colloquially called, can both remotely see your screen and control your device, all without you knowing.

What is Octo?

Many hackers attempt to break into your accounts from their personal devices, by phishing for your login information, as well as your MFA codes. However, Octo allows bad actors to remotely access your Android phone, in what’s called on-device fraud (ODF). ODF is extremely dangerous, since the activity isn’t happening from somewhere else in the world, but from the device your accounts and networks expect it to.

How does Octo work?

Octo takes over Android’s MediaProjection function in order to stream your smartphone’s activity remotely. While it’s not a perfect livestream (the video runs about 1 frame per second), it’s plenty fast for hackers to see what they’re doing on your device. In order to actually do anything, though, they’ll next use Octo to take over AccessibilityService.

You won’t see any of this happening, however, because Octo employs a black overlay on your screen, in addition to silencing any notifications you may receive: From your perspective, your phone appears shut off, but to hackers, it’s open season on your Android device.

From here, hackers can perform an assortment of tasks remotely on your device, including taps, gestures, entering text, pasting text, long-clicks, and scrolling, among other commands. On top of that, a hacker doesn’t even need to do these things themself: Rather, they can simply “tell” the malware what they want it to do, and the malware will perform tasks automatically. You can imagine, then, the potential scale of fraud is widened considerably, since it doesn’t require a human to sit there and go through the steps one-by-one.

How does Octo get on your Android phone?

Like many malware infections, compromised apps are a major vehicle for installation. According to ThreatFabric, the app “Fast Cleaner” was found to contain Octo in addition to other malware types, and was downloaded over 50,000 times before Google removed it from the Play Store. The app primarily targeted users of European banks, and installed Octo by convincing the users to install a “browser update.” Other affected apps include a screen recorder called “Pocket Screencaster,” as well as suite of fake banking apps designed to trick users of the real banks into downloading them.

The secret to steering clear of Octo, then, is to employ excellent cybersecurity practices on your Android device at all times. Never download an app from the Play Store without thoroughly vetting it first. While Google’s rejection system is certainly better than it used to be, compromised apps make it through all the time.

Next, be extremely wary of apps that ask you to download a separate app, or to install an update from their link, not the Play Store. Legitimate apps want you to use their app, not to follow a sketchy link to download some other app. Similarly, your apps will receive updates from the Play Store, not the app’s proprietary update site. These methods are classic malware installation tactics, and you can avoid them by simply being thoughtful about the actions you take on Android.

If you’re concerned you might have installed malware, you can use a trusted service like MalwareBytes to scan your device for malicious software. If you need to go nuclear, a factory-reset can wipe out any malware and install a fresh version of Android on your phone. As long as you are mindful about the apps and links you interact with on your devices, however, you should be well on your way to avoiding Octo and other malware like it.

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How to Watch Ad-Free YouTube Videos on Android

YouTube is gradually becoming an “adtube” and there is nothing funny about it. By encouraging the popular bloggers to uncontrollably monetize their efforts, the platform got its video ads out of hand. I’m not here to moralize or to teach advertisers how to do their business. What we can change is the number of ads we see while watching our favorite YouTube shows. With that, I will announce several solutions:

  1. YouTube Premium. Yes, it costs $11.99/month, but it removes ads on all your devices. Your TV, PC, Android smartphone, everywhere. And it gives you access to features like background playback and picture-in-picture.
  2. NewPipe it’s a free, and open-source player for YouTube. It’s lightweight, but it offers the features you care most about: No ads, background playback, and picture-in-picture. NewPipe is the app I have personally used over the past couple of years. NewPipe isn’t available on the Play Store. But you can directly download the APK installer from their website, or you can find the app on the F-Droid app store (an alternate to Google Play Store, which hosts free and open source apps).

  3. SkyTube is another free and open-source third-party YouTube app, just like NewPipe. It also offers the basic features you’ll want, including no ads, and background payback.

    The only real downside is that this is a view-only app. You can’t sign in to your YouTube account, so there’s no sync feature. The app has its own feature for channel subscriptions and bookmarks.

  4. uBlock Origin add-on for Firefox one clear reason for using Firefox over Google Chrome on Android is its huge gallery of free add-ons. And they’ll come really handy here. If you install the uBlock Origin add-on, you’ll get an ad-free YouTube experience in the browser. Go to Menu Add-ons > and enable uBlock Origin. The downside? No features like offline downloads.

  5. Brave browser the app comes with an ad-blocking feature by default, and as long as you have enabled the Shields Up feature for the YouTube site, you should be good to go.

Before ending this topic I want to mention YouTube Vanced app.

The popular Vanced YouTube app is being discontinued, after a legal threat from Google. The creators of Vanced have revealed the project will be shut down in the coming days, with download links set to be removed. While the app will continue to work for anyone who currently has it installed on Android, without any future updates it’s likely to stop working at some point soon. The Vanced owners say they’ve had to discontinue the project “due to legal reasons.”

If you have Vanced installed right now, it will continue working for the foreseeable future.

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