Hiddad

Hiddad is an Android-based piece of adware. Most of the activity of the Hiddad adware is concentrated in Russia, with over 40% of the victims being located there. However, there have been reports of infections in the USA, India, Germany, Ukraine, Indonesia among other countries. The creators of the Hiddad adware employ various social engineering techniques to achieve their end goal, which is convince the user to click on their advertisements. This may not sound like too much of a big deal, but the authors of the Hiddad can cash in some significant revenue if they manage to plant their creation on enough host devices.

Spreads via Fake Applications

This piece of adware appears to have been hosted on the official Google Play Stor, posing as several fake applications ‘Snap Tube,’ ‘Music Mania,’ and ‘Tube Mate.’ Thankfully, the developers at the Google Play Store have clocked in on these fraudulent applications and have since removed them from their platform. These bogus applications claimed to offer some great features such as free of charge music streaming services and even removing the annoying advertisements from YouTube videos. However, if the user installs one of these bogus applications, they will be asked for a long list of permissions, which is not what a legitimate application of this sort would do. Then, the application will install third-party software under the fake name ‘plugin android,’ which demands that the user grants it with administrator privileges. Giving these privileges to the application will make it far more difficult to remove it from your device, as it will likely inject its files into a system folder.

The Google Play Store Removes Rogue Applications

Despite the Google Play Store removing the applications associated with the Hiddad adware, it is more than likely that its creators are propagating it via other applications that are yet to be detected. To make matters worse, after gaining persistence, the application will present the users with a prompt asking them to give the application a five-star rating. The worst part is that this prompt cannot be closed unless you give in and rate the application with five stars on the Google Play Store. This is a very aggressive technique, and judging by the ratings of the Hiddad-related applications on the Google Play Store, quite a lot of people have been forced into giving a five-star rating.

However, even if you end up giving the desired review to the fake application, it will not cease to spam you with advertisements. The application also will make sure to bombard you with notifications both in your browser and in the notification area.

If you have the Hiddad adware on your Android device, we would advise you to remove it with an anti-malware tool immediately.