Security News > 2020 > April > Security, Privacy Issues Found in Government COVID-19 Mobile Apps
Governments worldwide have released COVID-19 mobile apps to provide citizens with useful information and, in some cases, to track individuals in an effort to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
An analysis of dozens of nation and government-sponsored mobile applications for Android released to help with the current COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the existence of privacy risks, vulnerabilities and backdoors, ZeroFOX says in a post highlighting three of the analyzed apps.
The first of these apps is the official COVID-19 application that the Iranian government released.
The legitimacy of the claims in the news articles linking to the app's download website could not be verified either, and the security researchers are confident that the app could be abused in the future.
"The backdoor is present when the Android app receives a BOOT COMPLETED intent, which is sent to any COVID-19 mobile apps that have this permission enabled when the phone boots, or when the app is opened," ZeroFOX says.