Did I Just Accidentally Infect my Phone With Malware?

Carlito

I recently attempted to start a Brave Talk session on my phone (Pixel 9), however when I clicked on the link to start the call, a.....sort of "evil cartoon-like smiley face", along with strobing alternating colors in the background completely took over the screen. There was very loud static, and the volume buttons did not do anything. The only thing I was able to do was shut off the phone and start it again. At first, it got as far as the normal "warning" that the phone was running a different OS which always comes up for Graphene, but it didn't start. I tried a second time, and this time it did fully boot, and now seems to be operating as normal.

Is it likely that I have just shot myself in the foot and infected the phone with some sort of malware? If so, what is the best way of detecting and neutralizing it?

Edit: the browser I am using is the stock Vanadium that comes with Graphene.

raccoondad

Carlito may I suggest checking your installed applications in settings? In safe mode if you are worried

Blank

Carlito I really doubt you have infected you device for different reason.

Vanadium has privacy and Hardened security features. With strong sandbox for its tabs. Moreover, the default settings if vanadium prevent any unwanted download : vanadium asks you to download stuff before processing... If you didn't change that setting, it should be OK.
Everything in grapheneOs is sandbox and requires the user's explicit permission to access resources on the phone. Consequently : Even if you downloaded malware it would require your permission to access your phone resources. Furthermore if you have different profiles, you can be sure it is extremely difficult to infect those profiles since they have their own storage space.
GrapheneOs has secure boot meaning that if your phone is infected and altered, grapheneOs will either wipe amy malware and check system integrity each times it reboots or warns you when you boot (with a red tag).

dhhdjbd

Do you still have the link?

might be worth a try to put it in virustotal and look what it says

Carlito

The link to Brave Talk is: https://talk.brave.com/ However, I do not see a way to get the link from the "start free call" button.

I am not familiar with virustotal. What is it?

dhhdjbd

Carlito

Sry i thought you clicked on a link someone send you..

I dont know anything about brave talk.. if it is a trustworthy website it is unlikely i think tho, that you get maleware by just using it. Even more so if you trust the person you called. You probaly want to check out if anyone else had a experience like that when using it/ calling someone.

Maybe he person you tried to call was pranking you?

Otherwise maybe it was not related to brave talk, maybe check if you have any weird files downloaded or something like that

Sry cant really help you...

virustotal is a website, where one can upload files or input links. It then basically checks if any avaible anti maleware tool detects something.

It is not like super reliable (because that is not how it works) but it gives a hint atleast
(for well known maleware it is reliable tho ofc)

Byteang3l

Carlito for what it's worth that link didn't have any hits on virus total, but if you didn't manually install and grant permissions to any apps, you're very likely fine. Verified boot would've tripped if anything was seriously wrong.

23Sha-ger

No, you didn't.
Longer answer: I try to "infect" my test device with all possible Android malware, including some samples
from an enterprise Virustotal (now owned ny Google) subscription. The only things I found are apps that
require either accessibility, or device admin privileges, that can really be nasty. All the other apps can't really
manipulate the device or other apps in any meaningful way. So just installing a shady app isn't enough for it,

Blank

Additionally to what I said earlier, brave talk is a legitimate service provided by Brave. From what I know. So if the link isn't a phishing one, I really don't think you got infected. I think the person who sent you the link just wanted to make jokes, in some way. For the phone that didn't boot nor the volume bouton working, perhaps it was a bug due to a pick of resources used by vanadium because of the joke.