Security News > 2021 > February > Security concerns arise over popular Clubhouse app after ties to China-based company revealed
Concerns have been raised about the security of audio data on the popular new social media app Clubhouse, according to reports from the Stanford Internet Observatory and McAfee's Advanced Threat Research team.
Clubhouse did not respond to requests for comment from TechRepublic but previously told the Stanford Internet Observatory that due to concerns about data privacy breaches, the company initially banned the app from Chinese users.
China officially banned the app on Feb. 8 and Clubhouse said it is making changes to the app that add "Additional encryption and blocks to prevent Clubhouse clients from ever transmitting pings to Chinese servers." They also vowed to do external data security audits.
Clubhouse spokeswoman Reema Bahnasy acknowledged to Bloomberg News on Feb. 21 that someone found a way to access and stream audio from Clubhouse on another site last weekend, raising further questions about the app's recent security updates.
"In the case of both TikTok and Clubhouse, we all know that if the Chinese government really wants something, they'll get it. In this case, the developers have disabled App Transport Security by default for this app, which means unsecured traffic and weak encryption standards may be used. The network diagram of the analysis of the app clearly shows hardcoded communication with Chinese servers," Agca said.
"This falls far outside of data best practices when user data is then being sent to biometric, voice and data analytics companies based in China. IT and security teams need a way to understand the data handling and transfer practices of any app on an employee device. Some app permissions that seem innocuous to the individual end-user may be malicious in the corporate sense and violate compliance policies."
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