StrongPity is believed to be using the copycat version of the Shagle website and the bogus Telegram app to install a backdoor that allows it to record phone conversations, as well as harvest SMS, call logs, and contact lists. “Unlike the entirely web-based, genuine Shagle site that doesn’t offer an official mobile app to access its services, the copycat site only provides an Android app to download, and no web-based streaming is possible.”

“The campaign has distributed a malicious app through a website impersonating Shagle – a random-video-chat service that provides encrypted communications between strangers,” said ESET on its dedicated blog WeLiveSecurity. A spyware program that mimics a web-based video-chat service and the popular social media messaging app Telegram to target Android users has been spotted in the wild by cybersecurity analyst ESET.Īttributed to the threat group known as StrongPity, the fake Telegram app is offered free of charge to the unwary on a dummy version of Shagle – a video-chat service that only offers web-based resources.ĭescribed by ESET as a “trojanized version” of Telegram, the bogus app is believed to have been used by the threat group to spy on targets since November.

Telegram android