sawa@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•The not-so-silent type: Vulnerabilities across keyboard apps reveal keystrokes to network eavesdroppers - The Citizen Lab
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9 months agoTLDR:
This study mainly targets Pinyin input, the most popular Chinese input method (hence 1bn potentially affected).
Vulnerabilities were due to the keyboards’ use of the cloud for dictionaries used in IMEs (essentially a conversion engine). Such IMEs are must-haves for certain languages and converts A-Zs to other scripts. Lack of E2EE resulted in exposed keystrokes.
Personally I would recommend switching to something which uses a local dictionary. RIME is a good FOSS alternative and can be configured to work on Android via fcitx.
While the study doesn’t cover English keyboards, this is as good a reminder as any not to use in-built dictionaries in general unless you have to.
There are Linux-native alternatives to Adobe and Affinity suites, though of course if you want to get used to specific app controls and shortcuts for one reason or another, you don’t have much choice.
If you’re OK with using FOSS alternatives, Inkscape and Krita are to Affinity Designer / Adobe Illustrator, GIMP is to Affinity Photo / Adobe Photoshop, Darktable is to Adobe Lightroom and Scribus is to Affinity Publisher / Adobe InDesign. All very capable tools IMO.