Chinese Olympic app has critical safety flaws, says report

A smartphone app that’s anticipated to be broadly utilized by athletes and others attending subsequent month’s Winter Games in Beijing has evident safety issues that might expose delicate knowledge to interception, in response to a report printed Tuesday.
Citizen Lab, an web watchdog group, stated in its report the MY2022 app has significantly flawed encryption that may make customers’ delicate knowledge and another knowledge communicated by it weak to being hacked. Other essential consumer knowledge on the app wasn’t encrypted in any respect, the report discovered.
That means the info could possibly be learn by Chinese web service suppliers or telecommunications firms by Wi-Fi hotspots at accommodations, airports and Olympic venues.

MY2022, an app mandated to be used by all attendees of the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, has a easy however devastating flaw the place encryption defending customers’ voice audio and file transfers may be trivially sidestepped.
— Citizen Lab (@citizenlab) January 18, 2022
The Citizen Lab report stated the app was necessary for attendees of the video games, and the International Olympic Committee’s official steering instructs attendees to obtain the app earlier than they arrive to China. But the IOC issued an announcement Tuesday saying the smartphone app was not obligatory.

The IOC additionally pushed again towards Citizen Lab report, saying two unbiased cybersecurity testing organizations had discovered no vital vulnerabilities with the app.

MY2022 is pretty simple in regards to the forms of knowledge it collects from customers in its public-facing paperwork. However, because the app collects a variety of extremely delicate medical info, it’s unclear with whom or which group(s) it shares this info.
— Citizen Lab (@citizenlab) January 18, 2022
China is requiring all worldwide Olympic attendees together with coaches and journalists to log right into a well being monitoring system no less than 14 days earlier than their departure. They can use the app to take action, or can log in by an internet browser on a PC. The app permits customers to submit required well being info every day and is a part of China’s aggressive effort to handle the coronavirus pandemic whereas internet hosting the video games, which start Feb. 4.
The multipurpose app additionally consists of chat options, file transfers, climate updates, tourism suggestions and GPS navigation.