The EU's age verification app can be hacked in 2 minutes

submitted by

The EU's age verification app can be hacked in 2 minutes. (Found by Paul Moore)

Demo :
youtu.be/1hfDOhrNx1I

In short :
- The pin you set to lock the app is encrypted, not hashed, which means with the private key of the app it could be reversed (there's no need to get that as you'll see in the next points
- Once you verify your age, the pictures and data identifying you is not deleted. Although on regular phones you and other apps can't access it as they are protected at the Android level, this is still a breach of GDPR
- The app's data is stored in a shared preferences file, which is pretty much just plain text. If you delete the key for your PIN, the app will let you create a new one, and still access the data of the old account.
- Nevertheless, the EU still brands it as a privacy friendly option on their site at t.ly/labwF

In short, don't verify your age online! This is really bad for privacy!
@privacy

#privacy #europe #opensource #cybersecurity #ageverification

2
88

Log in to comment

Hot Top New Old
edited

How is this hacking? You have access to someones phone, and then you can see their photos? It would probably be better for the app to delete the local photos but that’s not a GDPR violation, and it’s clearly an early-stage prototype.

 reply
1

This is the 20ies post I see about this.

And the 10th times I will say it:

This is a prototype release. This is not a production ready release. It demos the integration. Each country will build their own app.

 reply
1
Insert image