How to remove a persistent malware?

Question

My Samsung Note 8 has gotten very weird lately. I get programs I never have installed, and when I try to reboot/reset my device with no backup they still come up after I'm finished with the reboot.

I also have in my "SIM" 2 cards, but I only have 1? And I can't access number. It also shows 2 different IMEIs.

The programs with weird names have all the permissions in my device. Some of them I can't delete, and some can't force stop, and they start running after some time.

Facebook was already installed when I did a reboot and the programs started coming in. I have a secure file on my phone. But this program has permission to everything.

How do I get rid of this problem? Do I root my phone? Can some of you guys please help me with this? This is making me a little paranoid.

Some of the programs:

• Dagger
• Customrabsclient
• flexbox
• istrumentzip
• OpenCenus
• rxandroid2
• agera
• customclient

I have used many anti-viruses like McAfee, Bitdefender, etc. I have factory reset my computer 2 times, but nothing changes. I have now downloaded AFWall+ to try to stop all these files, but I want to delete them all.

And when I check root manager it says that my phone is not rooted in the proper way. I never ever have rooted this phone.

Answer 1

If bloatware (pre-installed system apps) is your concern, then I wouldn't recommended rooting just for that purpose. If your Note 8 is out of warranty, then rooting wouldn't be a problem. But still, if only uninstalling the pre-installed system apps is all you want, then you can use ADB to get rid of them, once and for all.

A few months ago I published a guide on my blog to do the same for the S10 series. Although, the method is generic and will work on an Android device. I have owned the Note 8 and moved to the S10e this year. Can confirm that it works flawlessly on the Note 8 too.

Here is the link: https://www.thecustomdroid.com/uninstall-samsung-galaxy-s10-bloatware-guide/

In case the above link goes down, here are the exact steps you'd need to perform:

1. First of all, download and install Android SDK platform-tools (This includes adb.exe, which you will need) on your PC.
2. Make sure USB debugging is enabled on your device.
3. Connect it to the PC using the USB cable.
4. Launch a command prompt window inside the same folder where the SDK platform-tools are installed.
5. Initiate the ADB shell using the following command:adb shell
6. Now, find the packages of the app that you want to uninstall using: pm list packages -f microsoft
7. Here "mircrosoft" is the keyword. You can replace it with the name of the app, you want to uninstall and it will enlist all the related package names to the app.
8. Then use the following command to uninstall all those packages: pm uninstall -k --user 0 app-package-name
9. Make sure that you replace "app-package-name" with the exact name of the app package that you want to uninstall.
10. Repeat the previous command for every package that you want to uninstall.

Voila! All the undesired pre-installed system apps will be gone.