Koo, a home-grown microblogging platform has come under the scanner after a French ethical hacker known by the moniker Elliot Alderson on Twitter uncovered the security loopholes in the Koo app. Cybercriminals can exploit the vulnerabilities in the app to retrieve personally identifiable information such as e-mail ID, date of birth, name, marital status, gender, and more.
Several Union ministers, politicians, and film actors are switching to the micro-blogging platform Koo but this leak has raised serious concerns regarding the safety of private information of the users. “You asked so I did it. I spent 30 min on this new Koo app. The app is leaking the personal data of users: email, dob, name, marital status, gender…” Alderson tweeted with emended screenshots of the data he was able to access.
Aprameya Radhakrishna, Koo’s co-founder, and CEO responded that the app is fully secured and data visible is something that the users have voluntarily shown on the profile. Aprameya explained on Twitter that “some news about data leaking being spoken about unnecessarily. Please read this: The data visible is something that the user has voluntarily shown on their profile of Koo. It cannot be termed a data leak. If you visit a user profile you can see it anyway”.
Alderson countered the tweet by sharing a screenshot of an IAS officer on Koo, he claimed he could gain access to the data of an IAS officer without it being visible on the profile page and he tagged Aprameya in his tweet.
Aprameya replied to the tweet – “@fs0c131y (Elliot Alderson) We’re attempting to do something for our country, India. All help is appreciated. If you want to help out in this journey of ours please write to me at ar@kooapp.com and we can take a look at all the feedback you have. Thanks!”
The popularity of the Koo app is increasing with each passing day and has surpassed over 3 million downloads on both Google Play and the Apple app store. Observably, the app is seen as the alternative to Twitter and many prominent personalities have moved to the Koo app.