Windows Phone Malware?

[Liam Perry]

Not totally sure exactly what's going on here, maybe someone can help me out?

My mother came to me this evening distraught because her Lumia 720 was 'endlessly displaying porn pop ups and advertisments.'

I thought she must be joking because in all my time with windows phone I've never experienced anything like that.

But true enough every time I search for something using the search bar in internet explorer the phone redirects to casual hookup sites, asking for men to sign up.

The only way to bypass this was to use the google search app (which is horrible by the way.).

Resetting the phone fixed the problem but I'm concerned that this even happened at all. Is this phone related (ie. malware/adware in the system?) or a result of something external? (changed router proxy or something.)

 

[AwesomeLewis24]

Well, damn. Windows Phone is one of the safest mobile OS's out there but at the end of the day, any piece of technology can be exploited even if you least expect it. It's a piece of technology, and obviously every single little patch wouldn't of been covered by the time it's released. There's always going to be a way through.

I honestly don't know how that could of happened though. But yeah, I'm guessing Malware was able to access the device by opening a dodgy website or even a dodgy attachment in an email - you never know really.

 

[Sandeep Challa]

How to get rid of this?

 

[Laura Knotek]

Does she sync her IE settings on Windows Phone and desktop Windows? Perhaps she visited a dodgy website accidentally on her PC and the settings synced.

 

[Funky Cricket]

if it was happening in IE search bar and no where else, chances are she stumbled onto a cookie or dns proxy redirect. Rebooting should clear the cache and it will be fine. The good news is, nothing can do much harm on the phone. I would also, as Laura suggests, check the PC to make sure something isn't syncing that shouldn't be. Also, was she in desktop mode or mobile mode in the IE browser? Also, teach her to us the search button on the phone, and not in IE...

 

[a5cent]

If it is malware, which is extremely unlikely, then it's still on your phone. A soft reset wouldn't solve that.

I remember one person asking almost the same question a while back. We PM'd back and forth and it turned out it was just an infinite page redirect. They left the tab open and whenever they started mobile IE, that page just kept reloading, over and over again.

In that case it wasn't malware, but just a webpage that went haywire. That person unnecessarily went through a hard reset, for something that could have been solved by just closing the tab and clearing the cache.

I suspect this is similar.
Any chance you still have the URL?

 

[Funky Cricket]

I didn't even thing that most users don't clear out their tabs. I'm still in the habit of always closing EVERYTHING when I'm done. Long years of network and security engineering. Always log out, and always close.