Twitter alternative Koo app found to lead personal data of users

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Twitter alternative Koo app
Twitter alternative Koo app found to lead personal data of users

Sadhguru, Piyush Goyal, Ravi Shankar Prasad Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath are some of the known personalities who started using the Twitter alternative Koo app.

Twitter alternative Koo app is found to be leaking personal data of its users including e-mail, name, and date of birth, gender and marital status. The app suddenly rose to fame after some IT ministers and known personalities started moving from Twitter to this home-grown app.

Sadhguru, Piyush Goyal, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath are some of the known personalities who started using the Twitter alternative Koo app.

 

Ethical hacker, Elliot Alderson spent some time on the Twitter alternative Koo app and found that it is leaking its users’ data. The hacker also had last year exposed vulnerabilities in India’s Coronavirus tracing app, Aarogya Setu. If we go by the details shared by the hacker, there is a possibility that the app has been leaking the data of thousands of users, but currently it is unknown how many users have been affected.

 

Elliot shared some screenshots on Twitter and said, “You asked so I did it. I spent 30 minutes on this new Koo app. The app is leaking the personal data of his users’ email, dob, name, marital status, gender”.

 

To show the IP geo-location as the US and the registrant name ‘Tao Zho’, who also seems to be associated with over 100 other domains, the hacker shared an image of the app’s domain and registrant. And the interesting part is that the state and country of the registrant are shown as Jiangxi, China in the image.

 

It is surprising to see that the Twitter alternative Koo app that is now being suspected over security reasons, had won the AatmaNirbhar App Innovation Challenge last year.

 

Koo will most likely issue a clarification to gain the trust of the users, but till now there is no response from the company.

 

As a part of India’s AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge, the Twitter alternative Koo app was developed 10 months back. The company describes it as “the voice of India in Indian languages”.

 

The Twitter alternative Koo app, which is being heavily promoted by Indian officials, was recently endorsed by PM Narendra Modi in his Mann ki Baat speech. Koo has already garnered more than 1 million users on Google Play Store and reached the fourth spot on Apple Store.

Also read: Fortinet Announces AI-powered XDR for Fully Automated Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response

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