Disguising itself as the innocuously-titled “Android Developer Verifier” (ADV) process, this trojan horse runs surreptitiously in the background as a system service with full root privileges, quietly awaiting an activation signal. The service cannot be blocked, disabled, or removed. Unlike a commonplace bit of malware, this extraordinary strain won’t be detected and neutralized by Play Protect (the malware scanning and remediation service that is installed on all Android Certified devices). In fact, Play Protect is itself the vector through which this virus is transmitted and installed.

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As we discussed in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Sideloading”, beware the dangers of allowing the terminology of debate to be defined by those who don’t have your best interests at heart. Malware being synonymous with “software we don’t like” means that they can unilaterally dictate — driven either by business incentives or by being compelled by a sufficiently powerful government — what the malware-du-jour definition is to be.

For precedent, personal content filtering in the form of “ad blockers” has long since been banned from the Play Store, and they have even classified some instances as malware. How long before they designate all ad-blocking software as malware, block installation on all Android certified devices worldwide, and permanently designate all developers of this class of software as malware creators?