Honor, Vivo, and Huawei Phones Detect Google as a Trojan, Why?

JAKARTA - Several Huawei, Vivo, and Honor brand cellphones and tablets reported last week that their devices identified the Google application as the TrojanSMS-PA virus.

TrojanSMS-PA itself is a malware that infects Android devices by sending SMS messages without consent. The SMS message will be charged by the cellular operator, so the victim will experience financial losses.

"My android phone (Huawei P10) today detected the Google app as a trojan more specifically TrojanSMS-PA. I uninstalled the app and started changing my password and then when my phone redownloaded the app," wrote one reporter on the support forum. Google.

"I have the exact same thing but I'm using an Honor Magic Lite 5. I just paid for Norton 360 antivirus and ran a scan but it can't seem to detect anything," another user wrote.

Some of the affected models include Huawei P10, Huawei P20 Pro, Huawei P30 Pro, Huawei P40 Pro, Huawei Mate 20 X, Huawei Nova 5T, and Honor Magic 5 Lite, operating in various languages.

Following the report, an official update from Huawei emerged and said that the issue appears on all smartphones launched before 2019 with Google Mobile Services (GMS) certification.

Huawei has provided an explanation for the situation. According to Huawei, their virus detection and removal engine is sourced from Avast.

"They attributed the triggering of the virus alert to an inadvertent action caused by certain modifications in Google applications. Huawei is actively addressing this issue and working towards its resolution," Huawei said.

However, other members of the Google community also offer two solutions, namely disabling and deleting all Google applications before reinstalling, or clearing the phone management application's cache and data, and updating the phone management application's virus library.