Vulnerabilities in Sogou Keyboard encryption expose keypresses to network eavesdropping.

  • Goodie@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    It’s stories like this that don’t surprise me as much as make me ask: How the fuck do you store and process this much data to get anything useful out of it.

    • toofpic@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      You just save the first 50 digits typed after some email is typed, and you have all the passwords you need!

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        This only applies if a username is a email

        And if it is then what happens when people actually email someone? Autocorrect during login?

        • ultimate_question@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          I don’t think they’re saying that method would yield 100% clean data but it would give you all the “necessary” data with the absolute bare minimum storage requirement. At some point people will log into their email and for most people if you have their email password you have the password they use for everything

  • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 years 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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      2 years 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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        2 years 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.

  • godless@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I live in China and this software is cancerous not just in the encryption failure, it also nestles into a computer like a trojan. Creates 2 fallback installations and will reinstall itself after removal if you reboot in between, unless you get rid of all 3 installations at once, where they are deliberately trying to obfuscate the uninstall button (triple confirmation, swapping the confirm/cancel buttons and button background colors, etc.).

    It’s a nasty piece of crap that come preloaded on any phone (android, at least) and Windows-PC here.

  • punseye@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    As if other keyboard apps are any different, I don’t think Microsoft bought SwiftKey just for fun?!

  • s20@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    And the Platinum Award for Least Surprising News Headline goes to…

  • nomadjoanne@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Didn’t swiftpad or whatever its called send every key pressed to Microsoft?

    Not a China shill. China is horrible. Microsoft less so as they don’t commit genocide in slow motion. But still, I think this sort of thing is more common than we think.

    Use FOSS.

  • kicksystem@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I don’t get it? Why are they talking in the article about not using the right type of encryption. The problem isn’t the encryption, but the fact that it is sending your keystrokes to the mothership, right?