After the row of Facebook, do Russian applications in mobile phones pose a danger?

The FBI says any application designed in Russia is a "threat to fight espionage", while cyber security experts say it is complicated.

In his report published by the American "Newsweek" magazine, the author Jason Murdock said that Senator Shack Schumer published a message he received from the FBI last month warning about the potential risks posed by a world-famous Russian application called "Facebook", allowing users to upload their photos and apply an advantage Magnify the life of the face on it.

Since the appearance of this application in 2017, many have questioned the ways the company uses to store images and data sent to its application.

On the other hand, the Federal Agency stated that "the FBI considers any telephone application or any similar product developed in Russia as a threat to security, based on the data collected by the product, privacy, conditions of use and legal mechanisms available to the government of Russia that allow access to data within Russia's borders" .

It is not easy to know what other Russian applications the FBI considers a potential threat, but the message indicates that the status quo is suspicious. The office also noted that the Russian intelligence services have strong capabilities of exploiting the Internet, enabling them to obtain data directly from the Internet service provider, and this means that it is easy to spy on the user data sent to the company.

According to the TechCrunch website, the research and development team of the company developing the application is currently in Russia, but the managers of the application, "Facebook" stress that a lot of data is actually stored by Google and Amazon. For its part, the FBI declined to comment.

The author stated that cyber security experts confirmed that the data held by Russia is threatened by exploitation by the same country that led the intervention in the 2016 US presidential elections, but they stressed that the reality is complex, and they were reluctant to consider all Russian applications dangerous.

In contrast, former UK government cyber security adviser Robert Pritchard told Newsweek that it was wrong to consider every application developed by Russia as a spy app, adding, "I don't think the FBI will adopt a political opinion, but it is part of the broad response. I don't I argue that the FBI is not trustworthy, but I do not see the reasons why this app is a threat to counterintelligence efforts. "

Facebook in the dock
The FBI's letter reveals that Facebook has access to device cookies, log files, and metadata. Last July, speculation spread that the app could be used to develop the facial recognition program, a claim the company denied.

The FBI also mentioned in the message that the Facebook app claims to upload user images to servers in the United States, Singapore, Ireland, and Australia.

Lucas Stefanco, a malware researcher at ESET, said he was not sure that the FBI was really interested in the fact that Russian-designed applications and Russian data servers were stored.

And if the Russian government can spy on any server in Russia, then it will be worrying, but it is not fair to say that all applications developed by Russia represent a threat to security, especially without evidence.

According to Sensors Tower Analytics, the most popular phone applications developed by Russian publishers are: Home Skype and Vegas Crime Simulator, both of which have achieved an important number of downloads. Sensor Tower data indicates that the Facebook app has achieved more than three million downloads on Google Android and four hundred thousand on iOS.

The author said that the founder of the application, Yaroslav Goncharov, said that he relied on third-party cloud service providers for image processing, due to the limited processing resources in most smartphones.

"The application carries the images that users have chosen to the cloud, then it is temporarily stored on cloud servers during the modification process, and it is encrypted using a key stored locally on the user's device. The images remain in the cloud for a limited period of 24 to 48 hours after being modified by users to another," Goncharov said. Once, then delete all of them. "

The author quoted Armando Orozco, chief malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebyts, as saying that the FBI's investigations into phone applications are political, adding that all Russian software should be isolated because it cannot be trusted in the 2020 elections.

In conclusion, Orozco stated that there are likely to be more Russian-made applications and devices sweeping the market. There is no evidence to prove that the Facebook app is a Russian spying app, but it has become very popular, even among celebrities and politicians; Orozco believes that this app targets people's money instead of their personal photos.

In fact, care should be taken of all applications that use it, whether they are designed in the United States, Russia, or elsewhere.