Some nice reviews by clients. Mostly putting these on the blog to link between my website and Upwork.
Genevra was nothing short of AMAZING! We needed functionality on our nonprofit’s website we weren’t sure how to do and she connected all the dots perfectly and SUPER fast. She’s extremely knowledgable, incredibly thorough, patient, kind, and responsive! Genevra answered a MILLION questions I asked (I’m curious, what can I say!?) and explained everything in a way that made sense to a relatively non-technical person. Honestly, our team was quite hesitant to use Upwork in the first place since we had never used it before and are a small charity. (Thus, we have very little risk we can take on as it relates to our tiny budget!) Part of it was also that we didn’t even know exactly what we needed or how to accomplish what we wanted to do. Genevra put all of those worries to rest as we exchanged messages back and forth before deciding to work together. She was very fair and transparent on pricing and worked with us. She also instantly knew how to help us and the best approach to take for what we were trying to do. It was TOO easy. If you’re looking for someone you can trust, please look no further and hit Genevra up – even if you don’t necessarily know what you need, trust her to help you find it! I’m sure if she doesn’t know she can at least point you in the right direction! We will certainly trust her with any future tech/software project. Genevra rocks!
https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~014ce5e09030e7b1c1
Working with Genevra was a great experience. She was professional, quick, and solved the issue I had run into with ease. I would recommend her to anyone looking for a great freelance web developer!
https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~019da05fa9f035f24a
Gen did a great job with minimal revisions. She also noticed other problems we were unaware of and brought up on her own initiative. Looking forward to working with her again!
TikTok is the most popular growing social media right now by far, surpassing the likes of Reddit, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest and Quora.
And it’s much more popular among Gen Zs and Millenials.
But TikTok was declared as a security threat and many have growing concerns about the operations of ByteDance as a whole.
TikTok Source Code Analyzation
Step 1: Obtain TikTok source code
This is the step most people might get stuck on…
Step 2: Spend hours looking through said program for suspicious things
Step 3: Share!
Beyond initial paranoia, let’s be realistic about what apps collect. Even Google collects IP (and therefore geographic location), and other pieces of personal data:
Google might collect far more personal data about its users than you might even realize. The company records every search you perform and every YouTube video you watch. Whether you have an iPhone or an Android, Google Maps logs everywhere you go, the route you use to get there and how long you stay — even if you never open the app.
So then what are we looking for? How is this different? For one thing, Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps don’t collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does, and they don’t obfuscate and hide their methods sneakily like TikTok. Additionally, TikTok has some weird code in it that no normal social media app should have. Here’s a quick comparison of the APIs TikTok accesses vs the Facebook app:
They both collect data, but TikTok collects more. And needs access to your SMS messages for some reason, even though it doesn’t interact with that…
Below deconstructs more about what the TikTok app can/does do and why it might do it. Make your own judgement at the end of the day. However, this is all just what’s able to be seen. Note that TikTok has the ability to update their app and add / remove code without updating the app through the store.
Things TikTok Collects
Location (once every 30 seconds for some versions)
Phone Calls
Screenshots(?)
Network Information (Wifi Networks’ SSID, MAC address, Carrier, Network Type, IMSI (possible), IMEI, local IPs, other devices on the network)
Facial Data
Address
Clipboard
Phone Data (cpu, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)
Installed Apps
Rooted/Jailbroken Status
All keystrokes in the browser (more below)
address code
location
phone number/call log code
facial verify protocol
location code
location code 2
screenshot code
screenshot observer
track all actions in app (including what you copy to clipboard/share)
Examples of code of each of the above collected items (click an image to see big!)
Location
Most apps collect your location, so there’s nothing too fishy about this. However, one could argue that your location is not useful to TikTok’s general functioning and therefore shouldn’t attempt to locate you so often or at all unless you’re using a feature that takes advantage of that. The data collected here includes your latitude and longitude, and exact location if they can pull it from the WiFi (done in the wifi collecting code).
Phone Calls/Call Log/Phone Number
TikTok requires you to provide a phone number upon signup on most occasions to function normally within the app, so they can link your identity to your phone number. They also collect your call log (people you’ve called) and have the permission to make calls from your device, although I’ve never heard of a case of this happening. Phone numbers are generally very unique, so this combined with location and name would already be enough to identify virtually anyone using this app in the U.S.
Screenshots
The app hooks an observer at some point (it would make sense to be on app load) that watches when the user takes screenshots. It’s unlikely this code can run in the background or does, but the app at least knows everything you take a screenshot of while using the app. Additionally, TikTok includes a string, “KEYWORDS”, that may be of significance. A keyword is defined as: “an informative word used in an information retrieval system to indicate the content of a document”. They may use this variable to find screenshot files and potentially scan/upload/use them. However, this may have legitimate use in categorizing images for upload by the user or be non malicious.
Network Information
It also collects lots and lots of Network data. The app uploads full lists of network contacts, SMS logs, IP, local IP, MAC address information, and probably anything else it can read from the phone (which is virtually everything).
Facial Data/Recognition
TikTok includes facial verification code as well, which upon first glance I believed to be for the face filters they include, but does a little more than that. The code includes a link to this domain (archived). Translating said domain states:
Oops, my bad. Should’ve known I had to reverse-engineer the app, extract a developer URL, and then get a translator just to see that I’d even agreed to facial recognition logging by ‘continuing to use this service’.
And further on, it states what I believe to be particularly interesting:
Near the bottom it states facial images are transmitted to the parties listed above.
In specific:
ByteDance developed this function, which includes but not limited to the Ministry of Public Security’s “Internet +” trusted identity authentication platform, “Query Center” and other institutions to provide verification data and technical support.
This is very important because it mentions a “Ministry of Public Security”, and an “Internet+” identity authentication platform/program of some sort, and it also states near the bottom of the same translated text that facial images and identity verification results + data is transmitted to said 3rd party.
It seems they serve the Chinese Communist Party, or are at least connected to the government in a very direct way.
And what is the trusted identity authentication platform? More research turns up articles such as this, and this. It appears likely all facial recognition data would be sent back to China and saved by various parties.
TikTok seems to be sending facial recognition data of anyone who uses the app back to some sort of 3rd party associated with the CCP that has all the other information combined. This could create a very scarily comprehensive profile and location on high-interest targets China wants to keep track of. Additionally, it can use shadow tracking, which is a term pioneered by the era of Facebook. Shadow tracking or shadow profiles are collected data or hidden profiles of people that don’t use the app but TikTok can keep tabs on because of connections. For instance, when you upload your contacts to TikTok, it will track the names you’ve assigned to each contact and use that data in cross-checks with other uploaded contacts of your friends. For every person that uploads their contacts. This can quickly create a vast network of phone numbers and identities, even for people who aren’t associated with TikTok at all. Combining facial recognition data with shadow tracking techniques, and everything listed in this post could make for a pretty sophisticated tracking tool.
Address
I’ve used TikTok for a while before now, and I’ve never been asked to enter my address, city, or where I live. However, the TikTok app contains code to parse and send addresses of locations. This is probably to generate addresses from locations collected for internal logging and ease of viewing user’s geographical locations. This is not to say that is malicious.
TikTok collects lots of data about the device you are using to access their app. Installed app list, device ID, phone name, phone storage, etc. Extrapolating from this, it also probably collects more data not proven here.
Rooted/Jailbroken Status
Detects whether or not you’re rooted. This isn’t that big of a deal but I thought it was worth a mention. Could be used in combination with other obfuscation techniques to hide nefarious actions.
Other Problems
Beyond straight up tracking and collecting data about their users, there is also a number of fundamental design issues with the app as well. For instance, the app uses out of date cryptographic algorithms, including MD5 and SHA-1 for hashing. Both of which have been broken wide open and are no longer secure. Additionally, the app used to only use HTTP, not HTTPS until recently, and that exposed user’s emails, date of birth, and username in plaintext to anyone smart enough to look for it.
Execution of Remote Code & System Calls
Some research states TikTok executes OS commands directly on the phone and has the ability to download remote .zip files, extract them, and execute arbitrary binaries on your device, allowing TikTok to run whatever code they want. While I don’t doubt this is possible, I have not personally verified the code in my research. However, I would not put it past the app to have this capability. Perhaps it’s better hidden now.
Keystrokes in the Browser
The app was tested with inappbrowser.com which shows all JavaScript events that are hooked. If you open this page in your browser, no events will show. This is a good thing. There are no events being monitored in a default, safe browser. The site is meant to show how a 3rd party app is abusing its in app browser. TikTok happens to monitor all keystrokes and key inputs in its in app browser, so the output looks a little more like below.
Security Research Files
Penetrum Security wrote an in-depth paper on TikTok if you’re interested in reading into a lot of what I’ve discovered here, and also compared how much data Facebook, Twitter, and common social media apps collect vs. TikTok. They’ve done great work and I’ve archived those files here. The data collection comparison paper is very interesting (second download).
This project has been in the works for a while now but it’s only just now kinda reached a good point that I would feel comfortable recommending it to others.
Since Adobe ended support for Flash in 2020, not a lot of people have missed it. However, a lot of Gen Z/Millennials grew up with Flash games as part of their childhood or have a fair bit of nostalgia around certain animations or videos. Newgrounds, StickPage, Armor Games, Kongregate, and probably many more Flash portals have been rendered virtually useless, and hardly anyone plays browser games regularly anymore.
If you ever get that itch of nostalgia or feel like watching some of the old classics that once made the internet great, check out BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint! It’s a great project that aims to restore and archive great Flash content.
You do not need Flash Player to use it. That’s the whole point. You download the lightweight .exe from here, and simply look through a nice game list with a simple “PLAY” launch option.
Flashpoint Infinity is the one you want!Double click this file once downloaded and run!
Once you launch it, you’ll be greeted with this nice user interface:
It’s a very respectable project and I highly commend them on their technological work and exhaustive manual labor of collecting all of these files/external resources and even custom-hacking some of the games to make them run as originally intended.
I highly recommend you check it out if you have time.
EDIT: As of 3/20/2022, Searchifier does not work anymore due to Microsoft blocking it. The post and download links will stay up for now, but they could be removed at any point. At some point in the future if a workaround is found this post will be updated.
Something changed between Windows 11 builds 22483 and 22494 (both Windows Insider Preview builds.) The build changelog makes a few mentions of changes to the protocol and file associations/default apps system. However, it omitted the headline news: You can no longer bypass Microsoft Edge [protocol links].
Searchifier works by handling the request send by your start menu to Edge and translating that to a link your other browser can handle. Windows 10’s latest update breaks this functionality by preventing automatically updating your default link handler at all.
Google unpublished a couple of my apps the other day for having out of date privacy policies. Fair, those URLs went dead. However, upon updating the URLs, one app was still not accepted.
Wall Ball. That’s because it doesn’t collect data on you. And what I mean by that is that when my privacy policy looked like this, Google rejected the app.
But, it’s true. Wall Ball doesn’t actually contain any ads or collect any data about anyone or anything. It simply runs as a small free game.
No one likes malware, but a particularly malicious type is called Ransomware, and it specifically preys on people’s data.
Ransomware essentially encrypts the entire user’s computer or specific files until a sum of money is paid to the attacker. While there is no guarantee the attacker will make the files or computer available again, it seems to be in their best interest to return access to the computer, otherwise no one else would pay once word got around.
A particularly nasty type of new ransomware has just been discovered, and it utilizes a surprising attack vector: virtual machines.
In a new report by Sophos, the operators of the Ragnar Locker are using another novel method to avoid being detected when encrypting files.
They are now deploying VirtualBox Windows XP virtual machines to execute the ransomware and encrypt files so that they are not detected by security software running on the host.
This attack is started by first creating a tool folder that includes VirtualBox, a mini Windows XP virtual disk called micro.vdi, and various executables and scripts to prep the system.
As the security software running on the victim’s host will not detect the ransomware executable or activity on the virtual machine, it will happily keep running without detecting that the victim’s files are now being encrypted.
Interestingly, Windows 10’s “Controlled Folder Access” may prevent this attack, as it prevents any unauthorized changes by applications without a password.
This is especially problematic for government organizations, business, and hospitals. In fact, one of their more recent attacks was on an energy company EDP (https://www.edp.com/en), where the attackers stole more than 10 TB of files and received a ransom of over 10 million dollars.
This attack illustrates how security software with behavioral monitoring is becoming more important to stem the tide of ransomware infections.
It’s more important than ever to implement safe browsing habits, and common sense when executing unknown files, as once the attacker is in your system, it’s game over.
