Kaspersky Lab told about the photo-stealing program SparkCat

The SparkCat system steals data using neural networks on smartphones of IOS and Android operating systems, and then receives data from cryptocurrency wallets on these gadgets. This was told to "RIA Novosti" on February 4, specialists of "Kaspersky Lab".

It was specified that so far SparkCat attacks are exposed to smartphones in Europe and Asia.

"Experts do not exclude that people in other regions, including Russia, may face a similar cyber threat. Programs in which the malicious module was embedded, downloaded from Google Play more than 242 thousand times", - said in "Kaspersky Lab".

It was reported that the program requests access to a user's photo, and then SparkCat, using an optical character recognition (OCR) model that analyzes text in images, searches for keywords to gain access to cryptocurrency wallets. In addition, the module can steal other data - the content of messages or passwords, if they are in screenshots in the photographic film. At the same time, it can be necessary to open access to it for the work of applications with the SparkCat system, the company noted.

"Various scam and fraudulent applications have regularly infiltrated the App Store, but this is the first known case of integration of malware stealing user data in applications in the official store," the company's cybersecurity expert Sergey Puzan commented.

The company recommended regularly updating the operating system (OC) and installed applications, do not store screenshots in the smartphone gallery, and if possible, refuse full access to the application to it.

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