A POPULAR app downloaded more than five million times may have leaking people’s data experts have warned.
Web Explorer – Fast Internet is an alternative to the likes of Google Chrome that’s pretty highly rated on Android.
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It claims to be much faster than big name rivals, cranking browsing speeds up by 30 per cent.
But it’s alleged the app has flaws allowing sensitive things like browser history to be leaked.
And it’s all because the developers left a crucial part behind-the-scenes of the app open, according to Cybernews.
The massive oversight apparently puts days’ worth of redirect data at risk, including country, all presented by user ID.
Fortunately the data is anonymized, so hackers would have to do a bit more work to make any good use of it.
However, if they cross-reference the information with other details it could pose a risk.
“If threat actors could de-anonymize the app’s users, they would be able to check a bunch of information on browsing history for a specific user and use it for extortion,” Cybernews experts said.
Researchers say the open issue has since been closed and no longer accessible.
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Any hacker could have got away with the trove of data before the warning was publicly issued.
Fortunately any bad actors hoping to jump on it now are too late.
It’s not clear what the developers of Web Explorer – Fast Internet make of it all.
Cybernews has reached out to the company and not heard anything back.
The Sun has also approached the developers since the findings went live to no avail.
The app itself was last updated way back in October 2020.
According to experts, this means “hardcoded secrets are still there”.
“Since the problem is now only partially solved and we received no response from the app developers, we can only guess what other information could be leaking through the application’s secrets,” Cybernews said.
Despite having millions of downloads, Web Explorer – Fast Internet’s numbers are nothing compared to Google Chrome.
Google Play Store data shows that Chrome has been downloaded more than 10billion times.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
