President Donald Trump has been promoting the White House’s new mobile app — pushing it to become the third-most downloaded item on Apple’s popular App Store. But the app reportedly has numerous cybersecurity vulnerabilities, does not properly disclose the data it shares, and uses software components from a Russia-founded company.“Cybersecurity researchers warn that the White House’s new app regularly shares users’ IP addresses, time zones and other data to third-party services,” NOTUS reports. “But most of its users wouldn’t know that, because the app doesn’t disclose its data sharing the way most others do.”Cybersecurity experts were shocked by the app’s “slipshod” approach to cybersecurity, especially as it is essentially a product of the White House, and especially since the U.S. is at war.“The U.S. government’s infrastructure is being attacked from all sides right now, and having an amateur WordPress developer running the White House’s public presence puts everybody who visits it at risk,” Philip Fields, a cybersecurity researcher and former FBI intelligence analyst, told NOTUS. He explains that if this were just a small business’ “random app,” it would not be a story.“But it’s not,” Fields added. “This is the White House.”Additionally, the app reportedly has left users and some White House staffers vulnerable. One researcher showed NOTUS screenshots revealing that a Russia-founded software kit company that “provides premade widgets for the app makes public the personal information of some White House staffers through the app.” NOTUS chose to not disclose the staffers’ personal information.Cybersecurity experts also told NOTUS that the data collected by the White House is not being properly disclosed.“The White House, as of its latest version released on Friday, left that privacy manifest completely blank, suggesting it collects no data from users,” NOTUS reported.“It seems to be sharing quite a lot of data about the users to these third parties,” a researcher told NOTUS. “The problem is that the privacy manifest says they do not share that information, but in fact they do. … That is a problem for end-user privacy because effectively, they’re misleading users about how their data is shared.”A White House press release promoted the launch of its “powerful new official mobile app — delivering President Donald J. Trump and his Administration directly to the American people like never before.”In his promotional video, Trump says, “Every American should expect their government to have transparency, and the Trump administration is the most transparent in history. That is for sure.”
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