A hacker has hacked into the servers of a spyware company and deleted about 1terabytes of data from its cloud based server.
The spyware company is called Retina-X Studios, a US-based firm in Jacksonville, Florida which is known for developing software used in monitoring smartphones and computer gadgets. This software is used by parents to keep an eye on their children, some offices employ the use and also some couples too seretly use it to monitor their partners.
According to Motherboard, the spyware manufacturer suffered a massive data breach in which a hacker who goes by the online handle of Precise Buffalo on Mastodon broke into Retina-X cloud servers and erased about 1 terabytes of data. Deleted data included photos Retina-X customers stole from unsuspecting users that they installed the application on their gadget without prior consent.
Deleted data from the cloud server revealed that the spyware software was used by teachers, lawyers parents, construction workers, jealous lovers and many others.
Motherboard said that they reached out to the spyware manufacturers about the hack but the company repeatdely claimed that they haven't been hacked.
To confirm the hackers claim, Motherboard created an account using Retina-X's PhoneSheriff spyware, downloaded the PhoneSheriff app onto an Android. They then took some photos of their shoes and then uploaded it to Retina-X server.
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Not too long, the hacker told them the exact photos they had taken and other photos that they had on the device. The hacker even went further to tell them the email account that they used in registering, and then finally deleted the data from their PhoneSheriff acount.
"Aside from the technical flaws, i really find this category of software disturbing, In the US, it's mainly targeted to parents," the hacker told Motherboard as he tried to explain the reason why he had breach Retina-X. "Edward snowden has said that privacy is what gives you the ability to share with the world who you are on your own terms, and to protect for yourself the parts of you that you're still experimenting with. I don't want to live in a world where younger generations grow up without that right."
This same hacker breached Retina-X in April 2017 using the key and credentials he found inside the Android app of phonSheriff.