Vulnerabilities in Sogou Keyboard encryption expose keypresses to network eavesdropping.

  • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    The people here acting like their Gboard doesn’t do the same is so funny.

    Edit : never used nor installed tiktok.

    • Paige (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      It probably doesn’t though. Obviously it’s closed source making it harder to tell what’s actually happening, but there’s nothing stopping security analysts from looking at network usage and such. I would imagine that Google doesn’t install a keylogger on every Android phone, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they don’t want the bad publicity and lawsuits when it would inevitably be discovered.

      • voxel@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        they do collect usage stats by default though.
        which include typed sentences passed through their ai model and words usage counts.
        it can all be turned off and gboard seems to respect these options. it doesn’t access online services unless requested with these options off.

        • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          If you mean by “collect usage stats” train their AI model on-device and send the training result to Google, then yes. If you mean that the actual words get sent to Google’s servers, then no. There was a study shared recently that looked into this. Only metadata about what’s typed is sent. That’s not nothing of course, but it’s not what Tencent does at all.

          E: Found it.

      • knock@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I mean he’s not wrong, but also not really the same thing. Gboard does send a substantial amount of data about the things you typed to google. It is supposedly anonymous, but they do this to get anylitics, and they use this data to improve the suggestions given to you.

        There has been at least one article where someone intercepted the data leaving from Gboard and found it’s either unencrypted or just hashed into something like base64. This was a while back so things hopefully changed.

        While google does try not to phone home users passwords, how can you tell what is and isent private?

      • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Even if i had it, do you honestly think i would waste my life to be completely forgotten and left to rot for disclosing it like Snowden. Yep, no one will ever reveal anything after that shit show.

    • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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      1 year ago

      I’m going to guess you’re one of the people who defends tiktok and compares it to every other social media app by saying the US government is basically the same as the Chinese government

      • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think this post is a defence of China, its a damning of the invasive governments, which the US also has.

        It’s a warning that we are one step away from China, and should do something about it.

        • prole@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          No it’s not a “warning,” it’s just boring old whataboutism.

          The first part of your comment is like a textbook example of the fallacy.

          • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It seems to be a very common fallacy in geopolitics to believe that a rival of the US must automatically be morally better. You see plenty of “left wing” imperialism defenses that blame Ukraine for the invasion and insist they should give up and do whatever Russia wants them to do.

            It’s apparently disappointingly complex for some people to believe that X can oppose Y and both of them can be horrible bastards. They can’t take criticism of China or Russia because they automatically see an implicit “America better” that’s not really there.

              • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Absolutely, yeah. I’d like to think I’m able to give a more objective take since I got into TikTok late, but I honestly don’t know that I do.

        • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          It seems people can’t understand this. Am not American so i have an outside view that’s free from any patriotic feeling and the spoon fed propaganda since childhood.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Not op, I know for sure that China’s been trying to grab as much intelligence as possible going as far as installing sniffing type software in network controllers and servers, and grabbing keystrokes from a keyboard is absolutely despicable and something they would do to grab more intelligence.

        The thing I have trouble figuring out is why in the hell people would care about TikTok. What signal intelligence is coming from my wife swiping through 14,000 cat and home organization videos.

        Location is turned off The app is sandboxed It’s not allowed to access the camera or the speaker without giving some minor notification that they’re on and people would notice.

        I totally get the China will do bad if they can but I fail to see the ultimate danger of TikTok.

        • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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          1 year ago

          I don’t know what you mean by sandboxed but I’m pretty sure it cannot be as private as it seems, even if you’re using a VPN. But regardless, 99.99% of tiktok users are not taking steps to protect their data. hundreds of billions of data points that help an authoritarian government know how people think is nothing to shrug at.

          • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Mobile apps aren’t in the wild west anymore. They don’t get access to the other apps and can’t wander around unlimited on your device without clear permission. If you say no location, they don’t get location. It used to be different, but apple and google are on the same page now and they don’t let apps abuse you without clear permission anymore.

            Even pulling your IP and giving them a vague city level location, They’re correlating that with liking 30 second random content videos and music. This isn’t even the level of intelligence you 'd get from FB or Youtube people aren’t searching tictok to see how to use software or edit code or how public infrastructure works. You’re getting organziation, cat videos, kids coming home from the dentist saying crazy things. I just don’t really see it as a big deal.

            • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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              1 year ago

              you say all this and trillions of dollars still ride on their ability, which we very much knows exists, to stitch together billions of datapoints to know things about their users.

      • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I will now answer any questions that boils down to “but we’re the good guys” to “not American”

        • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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          1 year ago

          What the fuck are you talking about? This has nothing to do with America, the problem here is you’re falsely equating a horrifyingly authoritarian government and basically writing it off as the “sAmE aS gOoGlE”

          • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            I don’t know. What i read on Wikileaks made me believe they’re not that different you know. Go read it, it will open your mind.

            • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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              1 year ago

              How many times has the US military ever murdered 900+ protestors in broad daylight then censored it from all media and imprisoned anyone who talks about it decades later?

              Educate yourself. Jesus fucking Christ.

              For the record I don’t need to read more about the US government corruption, that’s known. The fact that you’re comparing the two is disturbing af

              • echo64@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                if you wanted to make this a whataboutism is bad argument i’d be with you, but you’re still toeing the line of “oh but it’s okay when america does bad stuff, it’s not the same”

              • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                Starting with the native American or i don’t count it ? I don’t know ? Is shooting a bus full of kids and laughing about it saying they’ll grow up to be terrorist anyway isn’t that far off and this is the tip of the iceberg buddy. USA is good at hiding murdering brown people by prefixing the word terrorists.

                  • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    1 year ago

                    Ask the dude from Afghanistan that was randomly taken and tortured beyond belief for just being in the place in the wrong time. He was repeatedly raped with a broom and his pelvis shattered from getting kicked repeatedly on the groin area. Oh yeah, he died. How human of them.

      • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Did you read it ? Can you share the part with relevant info. I tried to read it but it kept going abouts how Gboard and the Microsoft keyboard both gather huge amount of data and yet that both are opaque and you can’t know what data is sent to the server backend.

        Also, ever heard of 5,9 and 14 eyes ?

        • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Google doesn’t sell to data brokers. Not yet at least. They have a competitive advantage they will lose if they sold their data (our data) to third parties, especially third party resellers. If/when they begin circling the drain, that may change.

      • ShovelLiz@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        I mean… Does It change anything? They are owned by a board of directors that want profits over anything else

      • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Man, Snowden wasted his entire life to tell you USA literally spy on everything you do and when caught their answer was : yeah, so what you gonna do about it, maybe you should do the same.

      • echo64@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        no they are just compelled by the state and secret courts which is totally different obviously

      • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I love how people overlook this part. You get all the knuckledraggers who want to claim the US is somehow just as bad as China is.
        The anti-American sentiment in here is obnoxious.

        • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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          1 year ago

          I’ve never thought that the knuckledraggers were anti-american. I think they are anti-intellectual. Using tiktok is more important to them than the future of humanity.

          • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Some of the knuckledraggers are. I guess I should have added that a lot of the edgel0rds like to rustle some feathers by posting anti-American views.