South Korea's "Smart Sheriff" Nanny App Puts Children At Risk

Starting in April, the South Korean government required that cellphones sold to anyone below the age of 19 be equipped with approved monitoring software that would allow the user's parents to monitor their phone use, report their location, and more. Now, however, researchers have discovered that one of the most popular of the approved apps, called Smart Sheriff, may not actually be very smart to have on one's phone. Researchers from Citizen Lab and Cure53, at the request of the Open Technology Fund, have analyzed the code of Smart Sheriff, and found that it actually endangers, rather than protects, the users. Reports the Associated Press, in a story carried by the Houston Chronicle: Children's phone numbers, birth dates, web browsing history and other personal data were being sent across the Internet unencrypted, making them easy to intercept. Authentication weaknesses meant Smart Sheriff could easily be hijacked, turned off or tricked into sending bogus alerts to parents. Even worse, they found that many weaknesses could be exploited at scale, meaning that thousands or even all of the app's 380,000 users could be compromised at once.

Comments

Re:You just know some Republican...

[Anonymous Coward]

forced this on them so they could stalk children. Stalk children. Their kind rapes children. Rapes children. You should never vote for a Republican.

Oh, my God. The Republicans have colonized South Korea?

Re:Start them young with surveillance . . .

[gweihir]

Only problem is that there basically are no "girls that have been trafficked". There are a lot of professional victims that simply make it up though and there is a whole "rescue-industry" that lives by exploiting those "at risk", hence the risks get manufactured and blown all out of proportion. They spew utter nonsense and have gigantic numbers of "victims", when in fact, it is extremely hard to even find a single credible one.

It is very likely the girl in question was not in danger. She will now be in fear of imaginary threats for the rest of her life, which will severely decrease her quality-of-life. I do indeed see evil here, and it is in the side of the parents.