android-malware

This seemingly innocent-looking wallpaper will crash your Android phone

Wallpapers are a fun way to express yourself and your personality, so it’s not uncommon for people to be constantly seeking out new wallpapers that they can use on their phones. Now if you are looking for wallpapers, then you might want to avoid one particular wallpaper that seems to be making its rounds.

This particular wallpaper in question shows what appears to be a lake, some trees, some mountains, and a beautiful sunset. It looks innocent enough, but according to reports, when used as a wallpaper with Android phones, particularly those made by Samsung, it is causing devices to crash, and in some instances, even going as far as bricking them completely.

This is said to be apparently due to an improperly coded color profile hidden in the image, which causes devices to crash when it is used as a wallpaper. While the tweet by Ice Universe claims that it affects Samsung devices, we are hearing reports that it could also affect non-Samsung units as well.

This is not the first time we’re hearing about seemingly innocent actions that can cause phones to crash. In the past, we have come across weird bugs where certain text messages can cause phones to crash. If you do receive this wallpaper from a friend, or come across it on a wallpaper website, don’t let its calm and serene looks lull you into a false sense of security and use it as a wallpaper, because what comes after is anything but calm.

As noted by Android Central, if you have used it as a wallpaper and your phone is crashing, what you can do is boot your phone into safe mode and change it out. Alternatively, you might have to perform a custom recovery, or enter the phone’s bootloader and perform a factory reset in which you will lose everything on your phone in the process

Source: Android Central

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