Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
WED 27 MAY 2020
India has open-sourced its Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app and announced a bug bounty programme to detect any security issues.
Aarogya Setu – which translates to English as "path to health" – has now been downloaded over 110 million times. Unlike many comparable apps around the world, Aarogya Setu tracks users' locations and its source code – for both apps and back-end – remained secret. However, that stance could not prevent partial decompilation of the Android APK, which led to some reports of vulnerabilities.
India has previously brushed off such concerns with the app's developers
Yet the nation has now decided to open the app and run a bug bounty programme.
It's not clear what sparked the change, but India's Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology admitted: "Despite the best measures taken, the presence of vulnerabilities may exist. When such vulnerabilities are found, Government would like to learn of them as soon as possible." The ministry also said the nation wishes only to share its code with the world for the common good.
India has open-sourced its Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app and announced a bug bounty programme to detect any security issues.
Aarogya Setu – which translates to English as "path to health" – has now been downloaded over 110 million times. Unlike many comparable apps around the world, Aarogya Setu tracks users' locations and its source code – for both apps and back-end – remained secret. However, that stance could not prevent partial decompilation of the Android APK, which led to some reports of vulnerabilities.
India has previously brushed off such concerns with the app's developers
Yet the nation has now decided to open the app and run a bug bounty programme.
It's not clear what sparked the change, but India's Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology admitted: "Despite the best measures taken, the presence of vulnerabilities may exist. When such vulnerabilities are found, Government would like to learn of them as soon as possible." The ministry also said the nation wishes only to share its code with the world for the common good.