Spyware Company Leaves ‘Terabytes’ of Selfies, Text Messages, and Location Data Exposed Online
A company that markets cell phone spyware to parents and employers left the data of thousands of its customers—and the information of the people they were monitoring—unprotected online.
The data exposed included selfies, text messages, audio recordings, contacts, location, hashed passwords and logins, Facebook messages, among others, according to a security researcher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of legal repercussions.
Last week, the researcher found the data on an Amazon S3 bucket owned by Spyfone, one of many companies that sell software that is designed to intercept text messages, calls, emails, and track locations of a monitored device. Motherboard was able to verify that the researcher had access to Spyfone’s monitored devices’ data by creating a trial account, installing the spyware on a phone, and taking some pictures. Hours later, the researcher sent back one of those pictures.
