Help I'm hacked and owned

[lusciousdark]

I have a TMobile Alcatel revell 2 plus and I've been hacked. I tried factory resetting but the hacker has added apps as factory apps and i can't remove them. Please help me regain control of my phone.

 

[Hadron]

There are two things you need to do:

1) You need to reflash your phone with the original firmware. This will format and overwrite the /system partition, and hence delete anything that has been added there. Unfortunately I don't know where you find the firmware for this phone (maybe T-Mobile can help?) nor how to flash an Alcatel, but that's what you need to do.

2) You need to make sure the phone isn't hacked again. Unless you have given someone physical access to it the most likely ways are:

(a) you installed some malware that gave them access. Note: it can't install itself. It may have been hidden inside something else you installed, but if this started with malware one way or another you installed it. So don't just blindly reinstall your apps after reflashing in case you reinstall the problem.

(b) they hacked your account and got in that way. So a priority is to secure the accounts: change passwords, enable two-factor authentication, de-authorise any other devices you see that have accessed the account and which you don't recognise. And don't use a compromised device (your phone) to do this.

The tricky bit here is sequencing: if you change your password and reflash the phone too close together then the "factory reset protection" system may decide your phone has been stolen and lock you out for a couple of days. But you don't want to access a newly-secured account using a compromised device, or fix the device and then connect it to an account that is compromised. So I suggest that you get the stuff for reflashing the phone together first, remove the google account from the phone, secure the account, reflash the phone, then reconnect. Removing the account from the phone before resetting it will prevent the factory reset protection from locking you out, and I'm assuming that a reflash will be treated as a reset for this purpose.

Good luck.

 

[ocnbrze]

how do you know you are hacked?