Delete this app from your phone: it’s been recording your conversations for years

Thursday, 01 June 2023 04:27

Delete this app from your phone: it’s been recording your conversations for years

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Unfortunately, cyberattacks don’t stop increasing. And Android is currently one of its main objectives. The latest example? An app available on Google Play has been recording your conversations for more than a year.

As reported by ArsTechnica, the Android recording application called iRecorder Screen Recorder has been recording our conversations without permission for quite some time.

Immediately delete iRecorder Screen Recorder from your phone

Worst of all is that the app actually worked as a screen recorder for a whole year, without any type of malware. Since its launch in September 2021, it behaved like a normal app.

The problem is that after being updated in August 2022, it went on to record one minute of audio every 15 minutes and forward those recordings, via an encrypted link, to the developer’s server.

All of this information has been documented by Essential Security Against Evolving Threats (ESET) researcher Lukas Stefanko, so it is a pretty serious topic. The developer has had access to all of its user’s conversations.

In said publication they point out that malicious code was added in the 2022 update “based on AhMyth RAT” (Remote Access Trojan).

And considering that it accumulated more than 50,000 downloads before being removed from Google Play, you should exercise precautions. In addition, they make it clear that we are completely vulnerable to attacks of all kinds.

The idea of this developer is very good, within the fact that it is a crime. Launch the app without malicious code so that it passes the controls of Google Play. Then, wait a reasonable time for it to accumulate downloads, and end up launching an update with malicious code.

In this case, we are not sure if the developer was the one who added this malicious code, or if he sold the app on the Dark Web to hackers so that they corrupt the iRecorder Screen Recorder application.

But what is clear is that we are not going to be able to easily eliminate this problem of apps that are updated with malicious code. And we are very much afraid that the best thing you can do is to only use apps from reputable developers. And if you can avoid them and use native solutions on your phone, all the better.

AS USA