TikTok is an enticing target for hackers
LA TimesWith more than a billion monthly users, TikTok is an appealing target for hackers who may seek to hijack popular accounts or resell sensitive information. Only days earlier, Microsoft Corp. said it had found a “high-severity vulnerability” in TikTok’s Android application, “which would have allowed attackers to compromise users’ accounts with a single click.” ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok surpassed a billion monthly users a year ago and now ranks as many young people’s favorite app. A TikTok spokesperson said the company had responded quickly to Microsoft’s findings and fixed the security flaw, which was found “in some older versions of the Android app.” However inconclusive or small the issues may be, there will be intense focus on TikTok and its parent firm at a time when the U.S. may step up its measures against businesses with links to China. The company has told U.S. lawmakers that it has taken steps to protect those data through a contract with Oracle Corp. “There’s a lot of attention on the way TikTok operates and there’s a big gap between how it operates and how it says it operates,” said Robert Potter, co-CEO of Australian-U.S. cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0 Inc. In July, Potter’s team said in a report that it had found “excessive data harvesting” carried out by TikTok on users’ devices, that the app checks device location at least once an hour and it has code that collects serial numbers for both the device and the SIM card.