As per recent reports, the Chinese Olympics app was allegedly found using users’ personal data. The application, which is further known as the MY2022, became compulsory for all those people who are present at this year’s Olympic Games, which is going to be held in Beijing. Nevertheless, it was found that the application has a lot of loopholes.
The Olympics app has a safety defect that can take users’ private data such as health records, passport information, and travel histories of users who have installed the application on their devices. Furthermore, the security researchers discovered that application code has two security defects that could reveal the user’s data.
The important discoveries of Citizen Lab disclosed,
“MY2022, an app mandated for use by all attendees of the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, has a simple but devastating flaw where encryption protecting users’ voice audio and file transfers can be trivially sidestepped. Health customs forms which transmit passport details, demographic information, and medical and travel history are also vulnerable. Server responses can also be spoofed, allowing an attacker to display fake instructions to users.”
According to the reports, the application accumulates a variety of considerably sensitive medical data even though being direct about the kinds of information it accumulates from users. The application does not disclose with whom or which firm it shares the data accumulated by users.
Moreover, the mandatory Olympics app further has features that let users report “politically sensitive” details. According to the findings, the application has a censoring list of keywords that target a range of political topics such as domestic problems inclusing Xinjiang and Tibet, along with references to Chinese government organizations.
Apart from that, the 2022 Winter Olympic Games are anticipated to be held in Beijing from February 4 to 20. Considering the Covid-19 situation, China has made it mandatory for all worldwide and domestic participants of the Games to download MY2022 14 days before their exit for China and initiate checking and presenting their health status to the application day after day. The MY2022 application was developed by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympics 2022.
