Missing Storage Space and Potential Malicious Attack

skiandtea23

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Feb 9, 2016
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2 weeks ago, I cleared 2 GB of storage from my phone because it was running out of memory. I haven't been taking photos, videos, or installing applications, yet I now only have 50 MB of storage left. I can't think of anywhere this 1.95 GB of free storage went.

Because of this, I suspected foul play and checked my application manager. I saw an application titled "tcpdumpService 1.0.14." From my knowledge of Computer Science, I know tcpdump is a packet analyzer used to collect and analyze all data transferred over a network. Is this application supposed to be installed on a Galaxy S5 Active? If not, is this a sign of a malicious hacker trying to steal my data?

Between the storage space disappearing and seeing tcpdump, I'm concerned that I'm under attack. How would I look deeper into this to find out?
 

skiandtea23

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Okay, I talked to my network analyst friend and he said that the tcpdumpservice wasn't a cause for concern. That still leaves the question of where my 2 GB of data went. I looked at data usage and saw that on February 4th, the Android OS used 1.07 GB in background data!! What could the OS possibly use that much data for in a day? Something just doesn't seem right here.
 

N4Newbie

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Okay, I talked to my network analyst friend and he said that the tcpdumpservice wasn't a cause for concern. That still leaves the question of where my 2 GB of data went. I looked at data usage and saw that on February 4th, the Android OS used 1.07 GB in background data!! What could the OS possibly use that much data for in a day? Something just doesn't seem right here.

What, exactly, did you dump in the first place when you "cleared 2 GB of storage" from your phone? If you randomly dumped certain files, there is the chance that the OS simply restored them by re-downloading.
 

Rukbat

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A lot of storage can be taken by "Miscellaneous" - that's the data being saved by apps (like .ini files in a PC). Tell the app to remember your login, it gets saved there. Add credit cards to a "pay" app, they get saved there. Etc.
 

N4Newbie

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A lot of storage can be taken by "Miscellaneous" - that's the data being saved by apps (like .ini files in a PC). Tell the app to remember your login, it gets saved there. Add credit cards to a "pay" app, they get saved there. Etc.

That's true.

But, my PC days go back to the IBM PC/XT and PC/AT when they either didn't have hard drives at all or a 32 MB (note: megabytes, not gigabytes) hard drive was considered enormous (and enormously expensive). And that time 32MB hard drive still held tens of thousands of files, hundreds of "apps" and all their associated data.

The point is, you don't fill 1.5 - 2 GB of storage with things like "Tell the app to remember your login, it gets saved there. Add credit cards to a "pay" app, they get saved there. Etc."

No, there is something else going on here.