Lukas Štefanko is an experienced Malware Researcher with a strong engineering background and a well-demonstrated focus on Android malware research and security. With more than ten years’ experience with malware, he has been focusing on improving detection mechanisms of Android malware and in the past couple of years has made major strides towards heightening public awareness around mobile threats and app vulnerabilities. He has presented at several security conferences such as Confidence, DefCamp, BountyCon, AVAR, CARO Workshop, Infoshare, Ekoparty, RSA and Copenhagen CyberCrime.

Vulnerabilities discovered in Android stalkerware apps

Android stalkerware, aka spouseware, is a popular threat sold legally through various websites. Based on our  telemetry, the number of detections of stalkerware in 2020 rose by 48% compared to 2019. Because of its popularity, and customers’ willingness to pay and trust of stalkerware vendors, we decided to inspect the most popular families to analyze their security.

We discovered  serious vulnerabilities in both the Android apps and on their servers that, once exploited, could result in  serious user impact such as account takeover, PII data leaks (photos, videos, phone call records, phone number, SMS, call logs, Facebook and WhatsApp messages etc.), removing accounts without authorization, credentials leaks over the network and on-device, admin console access without restriction, allowing identification of the buyer of the stalkerware or possibly even using fabricated evidence to frame the person spied upon.

Most of the time this problem resides because of unwillingness of fixing them by the developers.