{"id":3156,"date":"2020-07-26T22:43:08","date_gmt":"2020-07-26T22:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackopspartners.com\/?p=3156"},"modified":"2020-07-26T22:43:08","modified_gmt":"2020-07-26T22:43:08","slug":"tiktok-is-spyware-for-the-chinese-regime-cyber-experts-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/tiktok-is-spyware-for-the-chinese-regime-cyber-experts-warn\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok Is Spyware for the Chinese Regime, Cyber Experts Warn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TikTok<\/a>, the short-video app used by millions of mostly young Americans, cannot be trusted due to its links to the Chinese regime and should be banned, cybersecurity experts warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The app, owned by Beijing-based internet giant Bytedance Technology Co., has come under intense scrutiny after the Trump administration confirmed that it was mulling a ban<\/a> on TikTok and other Chinese apps\u2019 U.S. operations on security grounds. Critics warn that the app could be used as a spying tool for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and users\u2019 content could be censored<\/a> if the Party deems them politically sensitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company has denied these claims and sought to distance itself from its Beijing owner, pointing to its American board members and new chief executive. It says its servers are located in the United States and Singapore, and that it would not share user data with the Chinese regime if requested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to Be Trusted<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Chinese security laws<\/a> compels companies to cooperate with intelligence agencies when asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Casey Fleming, CEO of intelligence and security strategy firm BlackOps Partners, described TikTok\u2019s claim that it could simply refuse to comply with such laws as \u201cpropaganda and gaslighting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Chinese company, citizen, and even U.S. companies operating in China are required to abide by local intelligence and security laws, he told The Epoch Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fleming said Americans commonly make this mistake when viewing the Chinese regime: \u201cWe believe China is the same as the U.S. or the free world. We believe that their intentions and goals are the same.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this \u201ccould not be more wrong,\u201d he said. The CCP has a handle on every aspect of society in China, and is engaged in a program of \u201cunrestricted warfare\u201d to supplant the United States to become the world\u2019s sole superpower, according to Fleming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll technology coming out of China\u2014either manufactured in China, created in China\u2014is controlled by the CCP,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Grabowski, an associate professor specializing in cyber law and digital ethics at Adelphi University, described TikTok as \u201cChinese government malware masquerading as a social media app.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He noted that the app\u2019s privacy policy is expansive, allowing it to collect and access vast swathes of information on a user\u2019s phone. It collects a range of data including a user\u2019s web browsing history, geolocation data, and what other apps a user is running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe app collects way more data than it needs to,\u201d Grabowski said in an email. \u201cFor example, it\u2019s odd that TikTok does GPS [Global Positioning System] tracking since TikTok videos don\u2019t display location information.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gary Miliefsky, a cybersecurity expert and publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine, agreed: \u201cWhen I look at the features of TikTok, I would say that they don\u2019t need all those permissions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2014, Miliefsky discovered<\/a> that many of the top mobile flashlight apps in the Google Play store were designed by cybercriminals or linked to China and Russia. In the case of one of those apps, he found that it was turning on the user\u2019s microphone and connecting to servers in Beijing. Miliefsky believes TikTok is a scaled-up version of these flashlight apps: \u201cIt is probably a very robust piece of spyware.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you want to spy on a country, why send in a spy the old-fashioned way? Why not just send in a great app and make it go viral?\u201d he told The Epoch Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TikTok did not respond to a request for comment about security concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing Opposition<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Governments and organizations have started taking action against the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India in June banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps, saying they posed threats to the country\u2019s \u201csecurity and sovereignty.\u201d The Pentagon last December ordered military personnel to delete TikTok from government devices. U.S. lawmakers in March introduced<\/a> a bill to bar federal employees from using the app on government-issued phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wells Fargo recently instructed employees to remove TikTok, while the Democratic and Republican national committees have warned their staff against using the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, a U.S. panel is conducting a national security review of ByteDance\u2019s $1 billion acquisition of social media app Musical.ly\u2014which was rebranded to TikTok\u2014in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019, TikTok paid a $5.7 million fine to settle U.S. government charges that it had illegally collected personal information from users under the age of 13 in violation of child privacy laws. Federal agencies are currently looking into whether the company has complied with this agreement, according<\/a> to Reuters. South Korea recently fined<\/a> TikTok over similar privacy breaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elements of activist hacking group Anonymous also recently turned its attention on the social media app. A Twitter account linked to the group posted on July 1: \u201cDelete TikTok now; if you know someone that is using it, explain to them that it is essentially malware operated by the Chinese government running a massive spying operation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tweet shared a Reddit post<\/a> by an engineer who claimed to have reverse-engineered the app and found that it was collecting an enormous amount of personal information\u2014much more than other social media apps like Facebook and Twitter\u2014and went to great lengths to hide this. This information has not been confirmed by security researchers. The Reddit user \u201cbangorlol\u201d has since created a subreddit<\/a> to share data for independent researchers to investigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A report<\/a> by security research firm Penetrum found that the app does an \u201cexcessive amount of data harvesting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom our understanding and our analysis it seems that TikTok does an excessive amount of tracking on its users, and that the data collected is partially if not fully stored on Chinese servers with the ISP [internet service provider] Alibaba,\u201d the report said. Alibaba is a major internet company in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, TikTok users ran an iPhone software that lets them know when an app is collecting their data, and found that TikTok was copying their keystrokes every few seconds. The company said it was actually an \u201canti-spam\u201d feature and issued an update removing it. Back in March, it was caught by security researchers doing the same thing, and had said it would stop the practice within \u201ca few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeding Big Data<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fleming said that personal data collected by TikTok and other Chinese apps is being \u201cabsorbed into big data and scraped with artificial intelligence by the CCP.\u201d This massive pool of information can then be tapped into to carry out economic or political espionage, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, the regime has stolen huge amounts of Americans\u2019 personal data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2014, Chinese hackers stole from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management sensitive personal information detailed in the security clearances of millions of current and former federal employees. That same year, Chinese hackers breached Anthem Inc., a health insurance company, to steal the personal records of 80 million people. This year, four Chinese military officers were indicted<\/a> for the 2014 hack of credit-reporting agency Equifax, which resulted in the theft of 145 million Americans\u2019 financial records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grabowski said among the tens of millions of young TikTok users in America, many are targets that the CCP is keen to spy on or exploit for blackmail. These include \u201ccongressional staffers, Silicon Valley engineers, research lab assistants and journalists,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey potentially have access to sensitive government, industry and R&D information\u2014and so does TikTok by extension,\u201d Grabowski added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fleming said that TikTok as well as any other Chinese-developed app\u2014such as video conferencing app Zoom<\/a>, a U.S. company whose software is developed in China\u2014should be banned in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citing the Chinese regime\u2019s actions over the past six months, including its coverup of the CCP virus outbreak, implementation of a draconian security law in Hong Kong, and growing aggression in the South China Sea and towards Taiwan, Fleming posed the question: \u201cDo these actions speak to you as a trusted technology partner?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more at Epoch Times<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TikTok, the short-video app used by millions of mostly young Americans, cannot be trusted due to its links to the Chinese regime and should be banned, cybersecurity experts warned. The app, owned by Beijing-based internet giant Bytedance Technology Co., has come under intense scrutiny after the Trump administration confirmed that it was mulling a ban on TikTok […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[14,17],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3156"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}