Dane has to pay a heavy fine for creating a spyware app

The Danish owner of the company behind StealthGenie, an app that allows users to spy on other smartphone users, has been sentenced to a $500,000 fine. That is converted to more than 400,000 euros.

The US Justice Department says it arrested the Dane, Hammad Akbar, in September and a judge has now convicted him. Akbar was also given a prison sentence equivalent to the time he spent in pre-trial detention; so he no longer has to stay in prison. However, he must hand over the source code of StealthGenie to the American government. The StealthGenie website had already been taken offline.

StealthGenie allowed users to spy on other smartphone users. To do this, they first had to install the StealthGenie app on the phone to be spy; the spy app supported iOS, Android, and BlackBerry phones. Once installed, an attacker could gain access to emails, text messages, photos, videos, and calendar items.

The app did its best not to stand out. For example, the app on Android was not visible in the app drawer; an average user would therefore never find out that his device has spy software on board.

It is the first time that a maker of spy software has been convicted in the United States. Exploitation of spyware is punishable under US law. It is unclear what that means for commercial malware creators such as FinFisher and Hacking Team who sell their goods to governments. Users of that malware are also punishable according to the American government. That probably doesn’t apply to governments, who may use the malware, but are allowed more than companies and private individuals.