[michaelmrose]

Most methods of persisting state have absolutely nothing whatosoever with kernel or modules which are a powerful way to hide malicious activity but far from the only way to persist state including malicious state. The only sane response to being infected with malicious software is to reinstall everything starting with the OS and scan user files AFTER reinstalling.

It is possible even plausible that you can disinfect many sorts of malware from inside a compromised machine but it is inherently less trustworthy and installing from scratch barely takes any more time.

[Gigachad]

If you know for sure you have been infected with malware then it’s better to reinstall. But on iOS/Android and any other OS with strong boot chain security you can proactively reboot your device periodically and wipe out malware you weren’t aware of.

It’s borderline impossible to persist malware across reboots on iOS these days.

[michaelmrose]

The topic is computers which is normally casually this means PCs, laptops desktops and other form factors none of which share this character.