MobiDash

MobiDash is an adware program that displays unwanted advertisements on Android devices. Although its payload specializes in ad delivery, it uses dubious means of concealing its installation and prevents users from removing it. Let your anti-malware products delete MobiDash as they find it and avoid download resources that are likely of carrying unwanted software in their application installers.

Applications Dashing Invisibly into Your Admin-Privileged List

As of early July, a fake FaceApp installer is responsible for delivering new versions of the MobiDash adware to unsuspecting Android users. Although MobiDash is a pre-established, Potentially Unwanted Program, new iterations of it include significant security issues that make it potentially re-classifiable as being a Trojan. Like most adware, it depends on subterfuge both in its entrance and for preventing its dismissal from the system.

While most adware bundles itself on the back of another, real program, MobiDash's installer doesn't include an actual version of FaceApp, and, instead, pretends to fail the installation routine. Meanwhile, MobiDash is installing itself. However, before it finishes, the user is given a prompt to allow device administrator privileges – but with a blank field for the application's list of operations. Malware experts can confirm MobiDash's continuing this trait of missing text for hiding its device entry in two places: Device Administrators and applications.

MobiDash's functions restrict themselves to loading third-party advertisements for the Android device, similarly to other adware. Unlike legitimate software, though, MobiDash prevents users from identifying it or uninstalling it, since doing so requires removing the originally-enabled device admin rights. Fortunately, users that are refusing the first prompt, during anonymous MobiDash's installation, can prevent the procedure from the outset.

Stopping MobiDash from Dining and Dashing on Your Phone

While MobiDash boasts of stealth-related upgrades that most advertising software can't lay claim to, avoiding infections should require little more than the standard security mindfulness while browsing the Web. Users can refuse third-party downloads and, preferentially, use reputable – if not necessarily bulletproof – sources for their applications, such as Google's Play Store. Various security products, also, may identify MobiDash's installer as being a threat, assuming that the file receives a comprehensive anti-malware scan, before opening.

MobiDash, also, is representative of the attempted advantage that unwanted and threatening software takes by hiding information. Although MobiDash possesses application entry fields, the lack of text in them can disguise its presence, unless users are looking for the specific, out-of-place UI elements. When in doubt, malware experts also recommend against enabling admin privileges or similar access-authorization to unknown programs, even if it seems harmless.

The features that MobiDash uses for delivering advertisements could, just as readily, undergo weaponization for spreading other threats, such as banking Trojans. As a result, users should treat this application as a potential danger and let their anti-malware tools handle uninstalling MobiDash immediately.

MobiDash is coming to an Android phone near you, but only if you give it your consent. Providing elevated permissions to programs without names is, evidently, about as safe as inviting a masked stranger into your home.