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TECHNOLOGY A23
Monday 21 September 2015
APNewsBreak: South Korea-backed app puts children at risk
YOUKYUNG LEE In this Sept. 18, 2015, photo, Ryu Jong-myeong, chief executive of security firm SoTIS, speaks meant children’s data was
Associated Press still at risk.
RAPHAEL SATTER during an interview at his office in Seoul, South Korea. “From a hacker’s point
Associated Press of view, (the door) stays
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) app. Associated Press open,” he said.
— Security researchers say or even all — of the app’s of these measures taken Many smartphone appli-
they found critical weak- cations are unsafe, leaking
nesses in a South Korean Sometime afterward, Citi- 380,000 users could be actually remedy issues that private data or sending or
government-mandated storing it in risky ways.
child surveillance app — zen Lab, based at the Uni- compromised at once. we’ve flagged in the re- But Citizen Lab Director
vulnerabilities that left the Ronald Deibert said Smart
private lives of the coun- versity of Toronto’s Munk “Smart Sheriff is the kind of port,” Anderson said, add- Sheriff — a government-
try’s youngest citizens open mandated program in-
to hackers. School of Global Affairs, baby sitter that leaves the ing that he believed at tended to monitor the inti-
In separate reports re- mate moments of so many
leased Sunday, Internet and Cure53, acting on a doors unlocked and throws least one of MOIBA’s fixes children’s lives — merited
watchdog group Citizen special scrutiny.
Lab and German software request from the Wash- a party where everyone is had opened a new weak- “This is not just a fitness
auditing company Cure53 tracker,” Deibert said. “It’s
said they found a cata- ington-based Open Tech- invited,” said Collin Ander- ness in the program. an application meant to
logue of worrying prob- satiate parents’ concerns
lems with “Smart Sheriff,” nology Fund, began sift- son, an independent re- Independent experts also about their children’s use
the most popular of more of mobile or social media,
than a dozen child moni- ing through Smart Sheriff’s searcher who collaborated weren’t impressed with which is in fact putting
toring programs South Ko- them at more risk.”
rea requires for new smart- code. with Citizen Lab on its re- Smart Sheriff. Park, the law professor, said
phones sold to minors. the security flaws should
“There was literally no se- What they found was “re- port. Ryu Jong-myeong, chief push the government “to
curity at all,” Cure53 direc- revisit the whole idea of
tor Mario Heiderich said. ally, really bad,” Heiderich Citizen Lab said it alerted executive of security firm requiring a personal com-
“We’ve never seen any- munication device to be
thing that fundamentally said. MOIBA, the association of SoTIS, said the app did now equipped with software
broken.” that allows another person
Smart Sheriff and its fel- Children’s phone numbers, South Korean mobile oper- appear to be encrypting to monitor and control that
low surveillance apps are device.”
meant to serve as electron- birth dates, web brows- ators that developed and its transmissions. But he was Some South Korean par-
ic baby sitters, letting par- ents may soldier on with
ents know how much time ing history and other per- operated the app, to the scathing about some of Smart Sheriff regardless.
their children are spending Lee Kyung-hwa, a mother
with their phones, keep- sonal data were being problems on Aug. 3. When the other failures uncov- of two whose Cyber Par-
ing kids off objectionable ents Union On Net endors-
websites and even alert- sent across the Internet un- contacted Friday, MOIBA ered by Citizen Lab, giving es child surveillance, says
ing parents if their children all the app needs is an up-
send or receive messages encrypted, making them said the vulnerabilities had the Smart Sheriff’s server grade.
with words like “bully” or “If mothers feel happy
“pregnancy.” easy to intercept. Authen- been fixed. infrastructure a security rat- thanks to the app, it is still
In April, Seoul required helpful,” she said.
new smartphones sold to tication weaknesses meant “As soon as we received ing of zero out of 10. But Kim Kha Yeun, a gen-
those 18 and under to be eral counsel at libertarian-
equipped with such soft- Smart Sheriff could easily the email in August, we “People who made Smart minded Open Net Korea,
ware — a first-of-its-kind predicted that the revela-
move, according to Ko- be hijacked, turned off or immediately took action,” Sheriff cared nothing about tions would turn parents
rea University law professor against the technology.
Park Kyung-sin. tricked into sending bo- said Noh Yong-lae, a man- protecting private data,” “If they knew that the
The Korean Communica- apps infect and endanger
tions Commission has pro- gus alerts to parents. Even ager in charge of the Smart he said. their children, I don’t think
moted Smart Sheriff and any South Korean parents
schools have sent out let- worse, they found that Sheriff app. Kwon Seok-chul, chief ex- would want their children
ters to parents encourag- to have this monitoring
ing them to download the many weaknesses could The researchers were skep- ecutive of computer secu- app,” he said.q
be exploited at scale, tical. rity firm Cuvepia Inc., said
meaning that thousands — “We suspect that very little the lingering weaknesses
