Lookout safety researchers have discovered that five applications on Google Play contain North Korean Kospy spy software.
The applications in question claim to be file managers, security tools and software updates. Four of the applications offer at least some of the promised features, but with regard to Kakao's safety, only a false system window is displayed.
Users who install applications risk information sensitive to the transmission of the North Korean Pirate Group Apt 37 (also known as Scarcruft), reports Bleeping Computer. Kospy can access information about a user in several ways:
- Key recording
- Intercept SMS and call newspapers
- Monitoring of the GPS location in real time
- Read files in local storage
- Audio recording via the phone microphone
- Take photos and videos
- Take screenshots of the device display
According to a Google spokesperson, all targeted applications have now been deleted from Google Play, but if you recently downloaded a Korean-English application to manage the files, you may want to check its safe use.
This article originally appeared on our Sister M3 publication and was translated and adapted from the Swedish.
