Moscow’s Department of Information Technology has been installing a covert software module on interactive classroom panels across the city’s schools, allowing officials to remotely switch on built-in microphones and record lessons without warning. A Moscow school employee published a technical breakdown of the code on GitHub; Mediazona independently analysed the software package and confirmed the findings.

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According to the author, neither school staff nor pupils have been officially informed that the panels record audio without alerting users, although some teachers may have heard about the practice through rumors.

A source in Moscow’s school system told Mediazona that interactive whiteboards aren’t the only classroom devices recording audio. Laptops from the “Mostech” ecosystem have the same capability.

According to the source, every piece of equipment is assigned to a specific classroom and a specific staff member, and the system automatically logs who is being recorded and when. The original plan was to have AI analyse the recordings, but the results so far have been poor, so the system will be retrained with human input.

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