If you’re someone who loves both pornography and sideloading Android apps, then you’re going to want to watch out for an app called Adult Player. Security firm ZScaler has found that the Adult Player app snaps pictures of users via their phone’s front-facing cameras, which could catch them in fairly compromising positions given that they’re using the app to watch porn. Even worse, the malicious app is locking up users’ devices and then demanding that they pay $500 to get it unlocked.
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The big thing that should clue in Android users that installing this app is a bad idea is that it asks for administrative rights as a precondition of installation. If you’re foolish enough to still install it after this, ZScaler says that “the ransomware checks whether front camera is available or not” and “if available, it clicks photo of the victim while he/she is using the app and displays the image on ransom page.” And it seems that rebooting your phone won’t be enough to get rid of the ransom screen either, since it appears even after restarting your device.
If you have this ransomware on your device, ZScaler recommends taking the following actions:
- Boot device into safe mode (Please note that entering “safe mode” varies depending on your device). Safe mode boots the device with default settings without running third party apps.
- Uninstalling ransomware from device requires you to first remove administrator privilege. To do the same, go to Settings –> Security –> Device Administrator and select ransomware app, then deactivate.
- Once this is done, you can go to Settings –> Apps –> Uninstall ransomware app.
To get a full rundown on how this malicious program works, check out the full analysis here.
