Kaspersky finds spyware reading chats in secured messengers

MOSCOW, Jul 10 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Kaspersky has detected a new version of malware FinSpy that can watch almost all actions of a user on a mobile device, including reading of ordinary and secret chats even in secured messengers, the antivirus software maker said on Wednesday in a statement.

“Now the program can collect data from the messengers that use encryption, like Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, and Threema. FinSpy for iOS can hide traces of a jailbreak (hacking iOS to get access to the functions closed for a user), while an Android version contains an exploit capable of getting the right of a super user and perform operations on an unrooted device,” Kaspersky said.

The experts said hackers can install FinSpy on a device only through physical contact or if the device was jailbreaked or uses an obsolete Android version, in this case perpetrators can infect the devices via an SMS, an e-mail, or a push-notice.

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