Ethical Hackers Removed Spy Software From Thousands Of Phones

Apparently, providers of spyware apps are increasingly being targeted by benevolent hackers. Attackers have currently penetrated the infrastructure of the provider WebDetetive and disabled its spy software on tens of thousands of smartphones.

Private Spionage

The company markets its malware to private customers. They then usually use this to spy on possibly unfaithful life partners. The unknown attackers have now thwarted this business. Their motivation may actually be that they dislike secretly spying on other users.

This is indicated by a short note left by them, which simply read “#fuckstalkerware”. According to a report by the US magazine TechCrunch, the hackers managed to gain access to the provider’s systems, including the user database.

All data was given to a non-profit organization called DDoSecrets for evaluation. This explained that a total of 76,794 devices were compromised. Since WebDetetive itself comes from Brazil, Portuguese-speaking users were primarily affected. The data accessed included news content and images, which were not in the customer database but were probably sent directly to the malware buyers.

Malware was disabled

The hackers said that after securing the information from the database, they disconnected the spyware installations from the service provider’s servers. It has also been ensured that it does not automatically repair itself.

A similar case was recorded a few months ago. At that time, LetMeSpy was offered by a Polish developer. This gave up its spying service after attackers broke into the systems and exposed the internal data.