The State of Stalkerware 2020 report has been released and shows that it is witnessing growth too. In simple terms, stalkerware is a monitoring software or spyware that is used for stalking people. Recently, Kaspersky released a report summarizing the stalkerware attacks that happened last year.
What’s in the report?
The report reveals several interesting statistics, including information about the most affected countries by stalkerware attacks last year.
- The total number of victims decreased by 13,630 in 2020, in comparison to 2019. However, a steep rise was observed in the second half of 2020 when lockdown restrictions were in place.
- The largest number of affected users were found in Russia with 12,389 victims, followed by Brazil with 6,523 victims.
- In 2019, Brazil was the third most affected country, however, it moved to second place in 2020.
- The U.S. was the fourth most impacted country in 2019, however, it moved to a third-place last year, with 4,745 victims. India, which stood at the second spot in 2019, moved to close fourth in 2020 with 4,627 victims.
Prominent stalkerware
- Nidb family was the prominent stalkerware, impacting around 8,100 users around the world. This stalkerware-as-a-service was used to sell multiple products, such as iSpyoo, Copy9, and TheTruthSpy.
- Other stalkerware families include Cerberus, Anlost, MobileTracker, Agent.af, PhoneSpy, Agent.hb, Cerberus, Reptilic, and SecretCam.
Recent attacks
- Recently, an unpatched Android application—SHAREit—with 1 billion downloads, was found spying on its users.
- In the last month, Oscorp—an Android malware with spying capability—was found to be targeting Italian users.
Conclusion
Stalkware can be a serious threat for users as it may lead to several additional threats such as abuse, harassment, or violence. Therefore, people must understand the risk associated with the use of such technology, and are recommended to use a security app to detect stalkerware and uninstall such apps from their devices at the earliest.
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