China's mandatory Olympics app raises privacy and censorship concerns, watchdog group warns

On today’s episode of ‘The Ingraham Angle’, Laura Ingraham tackles China using the Olympics to promote the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda. Plus, new leadership restores law and order in Virginia.

An app that China is using to track attendees at the Beijing Olympics next month has raised concerns from a cybersecurity watchdog about "a simple but devastating flaw" that it says poses privacy concerns.

The Citizen Lab, based at the University of Toronto, said in an extensive report by research associate Jeffrey Knockel that the mandatory MY2022 app fails to validate some SSL certificates, which could leave open information to being intercepted by a malicious host, as reported by The Canadian Press.

Those who attend the Olympics, including athletes and journalists, are required to download the app and upload their health and vaccination information to track potential outbreaks of COVID-19. The report warns that sensitive data even unrelated to medical information could leak given the flaws in the app, which was built by the Beijing Organizing Committee.

A man wearing a face mask with the image of China's President Xi Jinping joins other human rights activists holding Olympic Rings as they protest in Taipei against the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games to mark Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, 2021. (Photo by SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images)

"The worst case scenario is that someone is intercepting all the traffic and recording all the passport details, all the medical details," Knockel warned.

Citizen Lab said it had notified the Chinese organizing committee for the Games in December about the potential issues but had never received a response.

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