Suspects behind malware that forces users to watch ads on phone nailed

Ti Gong

Two men have been taken into custody for allegedly developing malicious mobile apps that force users to watch advertisements on their phones, Shanghai police said on Wednesday.

This is the first ever criminal case in Shanghai involving illegal control of mobile phone operating systems.

Police started their investigation in early June after a man surnamed Wu reported that his phone was likely to have been hijacked by some unknown malicious app since he was forced to watch some ads every time he unlocked the handset and even antivirus software couldn't solve the problem.

Moreover, there was no button for him to skip the ads.

An examination of Wu's phone found that three of the apps on the phone contained malicious codes that enable forced windows and at the same time conceal such operation from users.

The suspects behind the malware, a man surnamed Niu and another man surnamed Gao, were caught earlier this month.

The duo, who were colleagues at a tech company, started the illegal business in mid-2020 with Niu developing the malicious apps and Gao promoting the apps and selling ads, according to police.

Niu has allegedly developed more than 20 such apps which six hours after downloading would force users to watch ads every time the phone screen was unlocked.

These apps have been downloaded more than 200,000 times, and about 20 percent of the users have been forced to watch the ads, police revealed.

The two allegedly made more than 200,000 yuan (US$29,500) with the apps.

Circumventing supervision

In this case, the suspects registered a company to be able to launch their apps on Internet app stores.

They circumvented supervision from the app stores by uploading normal apps first and then replacing them with malicious ones, police revealed.

All of their malicious apps, mostly small tool software, have been removed from the app stores.