Dating apps found 'leaking' location data

Dating apps found 'leaking' location data

Dating apps found 'leaking' location data

Many applications dating mobile phone can be hacked to expose the exact location of users, security experts warn.

The researchers said the vulnerability could let users have the bullying, harassment or persecution.By tricking applications into application servers behind, they were able to track people as they moved around during the day researchers.They said the application vendor and identified gaps in some countries, but most users are still at risk.

Core functionFound weaknesses in locating the leak by Colby Moore and Patrick Wardle SYNACK cyber security signature. The couple most of their attention on the application of dating gay Grindr focused but said the other applications that are vulnerable because of its history the same way The researchers found that they could exploit a feature of Grindr users to say how you're away from other people who have signed up to use the service and the exchange where they are. Calls for applications in several different data sources to provide accurate measurements of the distance.

Posted to exploit a loophole of several researchers requests for servers behind Grindr, all seems to come from a different place. This allowed them to get multiple estimates of the distance to the goal of these separate sites. This made it possible to calculate the exact location of the person by triangulation.

In a presentation at the conference Shmoocon Mr. Colby showed how he was able to use a loophole to set all Grindr users in the San Francisco Bay area and those in the Winter Olympics in Sochi. He said that the correlation of these data with information from the website and social media sites can make it easier to find the identity of a person.

While the researchers that the exploitation of the lake has not been easy, and they said, there was evidence that had been attacked in Egypt to harass some users dating application.

He Grindr may SYNACK said about the weakness led the company to upgrade versions of your application is available in the countries that Homosexuality is illegal or that has a history of violence against gays.

He added that he has made it easy for people to stop sharing your location if you're worried about how they can be misused.

Grindr said in a blog post published shortly after he was told about the problem that he has no plans to change the detection system is located in the states that was used because it was "essential function" of the service instead of the security failure.

As a result, Mr. Moore said technology news site Ars Technica, the problem still exists for countries outside Grindr users to share site has been deactivated.

"We've been able to reproduce this attack several times participants prepared without fail," he said.

He Grindr can make it difficult for so much more to exploit verify that people were heading requests to locate and arrest those who were clearly false errors. He also said that the company can make the site less accurate data to help people to dark places.