Hacker claims Koo person information leak; CEO replies ‘shown voluntarily’

Home-grown microblogging platform Koo, which is being promoted by Union ministers, politicians and movie actors, got here beneath criticism Thursday for bugs within the app that allegedly trigger it to leak customers’ private information.
A French cybersecurity researcher, identified by the moniker Elliot Alderson on Twitter, posted early Thursday that he might entry private information of Koo customers, together with e-mail ID, date of start, marital standing and gender. “You asked so I did it. I spent 30 min on this new Koo app. The app is leaking the personal data of users: email, dob, name, marital status, gender…” Alderson tweeted, together with redacted screenshots of the information he was in a position to entry.
In response to info put out by Alderson, Koo’s co-founder and CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna stated that the information seen is “something that the user has voluntarily shown on their profile of Koo”. “It cannot be termed a data leak. If you visit a user profile you can see it anyway,” he added.
This was countered by Alderson, who shared a screenshot of the Koo profile of an IAS officer whose information Alderson claimed he might entry, with out it being seen on the profile web page as identified by Radhakrishna. He tagged the Koo CEO in his tweet.
Following Alderson’s tweet, Radhakrishna replied: “We’re attempting to do something for our country, India. All help is appreciated. If you want to help out in this journey of ours please write to me on ar@kooapp.com and we can take a look at all the feedback you have. Thanks!”

Koo, which has crossed over 3 million downloads – over half of which got here within the final 30-40 days – has out of the blue gained traction over the previous couple of days with union ministers like Piyush Goyal, different outstanding personalities, and authorities departments and senior officers selling it. Given the shot within the arm Koo is getting from these quarters at a time when its greatest rival Twitter is embroiled in a spat with the Centre, business insiders are suggesting that the federal government is trying to push the app as a substitute for Twitter.
Following a gathering between Twitter’s senior executives and IT Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney on Wednesday, the federal government stated that Twitter was welcome to do enterprise in India however it “must also respect the Indian laws and democratic institutions”.
Meanwhile, the Koo App on Wednesday had crashed for some time after seeing greater than anticipated visitors. Radhakrishna had instructed The Indian Express that the corporate didn’t anticipate the load and will likely be trying to scale up going forward to keep away from such eventualities.