The Ministry of National Security has court the “attention and necessary intervention” of the Communications Ministry over “the existence of WhatsApp and Telegram modifications for Android devices” that transports “sensitive details” of subscribers to a third party.
In a confidential memo signed by the Minister of National Security, Albert Kan-Dapaah, Wednesday, November 15, 2023, a copy of which is available to OnuaOnline to the Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the development was discovered by a multinational cybersecurity company called Kaspersky.
“Reports indicate that researchers from Kaspersky, a multinational cybersecurity company, have revealed the existence of WhatsApp and Telegram modifications for Android devices, that have embedded malware called CanesSpy, which is coded in Arabic and Azerbaijani,” the memo contained in some parts.
Describing the mode of retrieving information from a user, Mr. Kan-Dapaah noted “that, these modified versions are designed to activate the spyware module when a phone is either switched on or starts charging, and subsequently establish contact with a server, to steal sensitive information such as the International Mobile Equipment ldentity (IMEI), phone number, mobile country code, mobile network code and details about the victims’ contacts and accounts, every five (5) minutes.”
Meanwhile, for compromising over one million user accounts of WhatsApp and Instagram, Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, according to the memo, “has filed a lawsuit against three (3) developers in China and Taiwan, for distributing unofficial WhatsApp applications, including HeyMods” that compromised the said accounts.
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