Smartphones can turn into a so-called “zombie” soldier. It quietly serves other people’s interests while you sleep or scroll through social media. Cybercriminals use your mobile phone processor and your home Wi-Fi for these purposes. However, this time the fraudsters do not want to steal your data, passwords or photos directly. They want to use your phone to commit illegal activities or otherwise enrich themselves.
A person can easily become a victim of fraudsters without even knowing it. …
How the invisible parasite in your pocket works
The principle of such attacks is very simple and unobtrusive.
An attacker uploads malicious code to some publicly available application. It can be a program with a VPN, or some photo and video editor. An unsuspecting phone owner downloads this program and everything works as it should at first glance. However, in the background, the code has already reached your phone and changed it to a so-called proxy node. In short, this means that the hacker “impersonates or hides” for you during his often illegal activities.
Cybercriminals use this especially when brute-force attacks. They try to crack passwords to other people’s accounts. Password requests come from different IP addresses (including yours, which the hacker is hiding behind). Because of that security systems will not detect the attack as easily. Another popular activity of cybercriminals is then cryptocurrency mining or perhaps unclicking advertising bannerswhich generate profit for the attackers.
Warning signs you must not ignore
All the processes mentioned above run secretly in the background of your device. At first glance, nothing may be apparent. However, there are certain signals that should always alert you. He is the first
unusual data consumption. If you have an unlimited data plan, you may not have checked your data usage in a long time. However, you can find out how much you have already surfed in the given month in the phone settings. However, it is also possible to find out whether the phone is using data even when the user is not doing anything on it. If so, something is wrong.
Check your data and battery usage, which are the best indicators , …
Another indicator is phone warm to the touch even in idle mode. The processor is thus running at full capacity, and the same applies to the battery, which heats up and discharges faster. Dangerous applications often try to disguise themselves as system processes so as not to arouse suspicion in the list of running tasks. A relatively common manifestation of this “attack” is the fact that it is often impossible to connect to some services. As a rule, these are online banking or streaming platforms. Your IP address has been put on global blacklists due to suspicious activity.
Where to look for the culprit? In the settings
Defending against these attacks requires correct phone settings and compliance with Internet security. The basic rule is that
don’t download anything to your phone “just from the internet”. All applications or programs download directly from Google Playwhich tests files for malware. In Google Play also enable Play Protect.
The next step will be checking network and proxy settings. On your phone, go to the Wi-Fi settings for your network. Check that “Manual proxy settings” is not activated. If somewhere in the settings you see a foreign IP address or some URL address that you did not enter yourself, delete everything immediately. Likewise, check out the VPN section. If you find something suspicious or a profile that is not yours, delete it immediately and ideally stop using the program and uninstall it from your phone.
Still the Data Usage and Application Management sections should provide more accurate information. Here we first sort the apps by data and battery consumption. If a small app like a flashlight or calculator consumes much more data or battery than the apps you use most of the day, uninstall it immediately and clear your phone’s memory.
date:2026-02-07 21:10:00