Apps targeted at US troops contain Chinese and Russian code

AI 中文解读

针对美军人员的手机应用竟暗藏中俄代码——最新研究发现，超过八分之一的这类应用嵌入了华为、Yandex等外国企业开发的软件包，潜在的数据泄露风险让人捏把汗。研究人员对数百款面向美军人员的App进行扫描发现，其中一款颇受士兵欢迎、用于给基地生活条件评分的应用，居然包含华为的代码。华为早在2020年就被美国监管机构列为国家安全威胁。另外两款应用由俄罗斯公司开发，内置了俄罗斯广告服务Yandex。这些代码通常用于广告追踪或数据分析，但如果被对手国家利用，就可能挖出军人的住址、工作地点甚至部署动向。更讽刺的是，本应保护军人隐私，却因为广告行业“无差别追踪”的特性，把军事机密暴露在风险中。对普通人来说，这事也敲响了警钟——我们手机里有多少App藏着不为人知的外国代码？那些免费应用靠什么赚钱？广告商越了解你，你的位置、作息、常去地点就越透明。即便不是军人，这些数据也可能被别有用心者利用。下次安装应用时，多看一眼权限和开发者信息，总没错。

A recent examination of hundreds of mobile apps marketed toward US military personnel found more than one in eight contained software built by companies in China, Russia, or other foreign nations, raising fresh concerns that adversary governments could harvest data revealing where service members live, work, and deploy. According to researchers at Purdue University, the US Military Academy at West Point, and Florida International University, one popular app used by service members to rate living conditions on their own bases include code from Huawei, the Chinese telecom that US regulators flagged as a national security threat in 2020. Two others were built by Russian companies and incorporate the Russian ad service Yandex. The largely unregulated advertising industry that tracks Americans online treats civilians and service members mostly the same—unless there is profit in telling them apart—despite evidence that exposure can reveal troop deployments, unit movements, and the routines of personnel within intelligence facilities and hardened shelters where nuclear weapons are believed to be stored.Read full article Comments