A spy software hundreds of Italians for years



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Hundreds of Italians infected with spyware (information gathering software) developed by an Italian company, distributed on Android devices and able to bypbad the Google security filters. His name is Exodus, he was identified by a group of researchers, the story is taken from the site of the motherboard that speaks of "government malware". "We think – say the researchers – that it was developed by the company eSurv Catanzaro from 2016".

"We have identified – the researchers added – copies of unknown spyware that have been successfully downloaded to the Google Play Store for over two years, and these applications have been available for months." Google, owner of Play Store, a digital store where apps are downloaded, contacted by researchers, removed the apps and said, "With advanced detection models, Google Play Protect will now be able to better detect future variants. of these applications. "Some experts have reported to the motherboard that the operation may have touched innocent victims" as spyware would appear to be faulty and misdirected. Legal experts and law enforcement officials have warned the site that spyware can be illegal. "

The spyware acted in two stages. Exodus One has collected basic information identifying the infected device (especially the Imiei code that allows you to uniquely identify a phone and mobile number). Once this information has been identified, the Exodus Two phase has been launched. A file has been installed. It contains sensitive data and information about the infected user, such as browser history, calendar information, geolocation, Facebook Messenger logs and WhatsApp chats. . According to experts, spyware was used between 2016 and the beginning of 2019. Copies of spyware were found loaded on the Google Play Store, disguised as service applications of telephone operators. The pages of the Google Play Store and the fake interfaces of these malicious apps are in Italian. According to publicly available statistics, in addition to a confirmation from Google, most of these applications have collected a few dozen facilities each, the number of cases exceeding 350 units. All the victims are in Italy.

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