Vulnerabilities in Sogou Keyboard encryption expose keypresses to network eavesdropping.
I live in China and this software is cancerous not just in the encryption failure, it also nestles into a computer like a trojan. Creates 2 fallback installations and will reinstall itself after removal if you reboot in between, unless you get rid of all 3 installations at once, where they are deliberately trying to obfuscate the uninstall button (triple confirmation, swapping the confirm/cancel buttons and button background colors, etc.).
It’s a nasty piece of crap that come preloaded on any phone (android, at least) and Windows-PC here.
It’s time to switch to Linux!
I mean the CCP is aiming to have people use Kylin? If the government and the entire populace starts using Linux instead we’ll just see the same BS on Linux instead. It’s not an OS/platform issue, but an issue of bad actors.
On the plus side maybe then it’ll finally be the year of the Linux desktop.
monkeys paw curls
Don’t worry, there is also a Linux version.
Oof
Then they’ll install the Linux version. People here are so indoctrinated, they like it.
Alright China shills, you can stop changing the subject to how Google and the US are the “same”.
The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June and engaged in bloody clashes with demonstrators attempting to block them, in which many people – demonstrators, bystanders, and soldiers – were killed. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.[15][16][17][18][19][20]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre
If you lived in China you’d likely not know about this, since people who talk about it go to prison.
Yeah the US is exactly like this so let’s not talk about the Chinese government being awful to their citizens /s
Simple solution is to block lemmygrad and hexbear in your app. That cuts down quite a few tankies and mainlaind Taiwan shills.
Imagine being in Taiwan and having full access to information about China and the west and still shilling for China. Those types of people should be looking for a dominatrix, not a political philosophy…
I think they might be using “mainland Taiwan” as a way of saying China - Taiwan is an island which China thinks is “theirs” for some reason.
mainland Taiwan
You must mean West Taiwan. Sadly they refuse to acknowledge the authority of Taiwans government.
No one is saying Google massacred protestors, but if you’re gonna be against keyboard apps spying on you it should be irrelevant who they’re spying for. Criticizing shitty things American companies do doesn’t make you a China shill and calling everyone who does it a China shill is intellectually dishonest.
claiming that the dozen people in this thread falsely equating what China is doing to the things that happen in the US – ignoring that they are very different, and ONLY considering that they are moving attention away from the posted article – is not so much “intellectually dishonest” as it is an intentional lie with a goal. Good bye.
Kinda funny how your own username partially contradicts your argument.
“It’s different when it’s dystopian dictatorships that were nominally communist in the 70s”
When did I say it was different? It’s basically the same thing.
Sorry that was unclear. I was agreeing with you.
If you can’t see the fundamental intertwining of Google (or any other fortune 500 company) and the US State, then you should really start looking harder. Lobbyists, revolving door membership, corruption, tax writeoffs, corporate power being used to influence day-to-day life, really, US companies’ control over the US state is pretty similar to the Chinese State’s control over Chinese Companies. I just don’t think corporations should be in charge like y’all seem to.
I think it’s weird how so many of you want to stop talking about China and shift focus to the US.
yeah I really do, because the average annual US foreign conflict is worse than the wildest liberal exaggeration of the worst thing China has ever done
I mean, ill always say that China is worse than the US. But you can find plenty of examples of the US doing awful things to its people too.
Like the MOVE bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
or The Tusla Massacre that involved law enforcement bombing black neighbourhoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
Or any of the countless of times cops perpetrated mass violence against black people during the civil war era and cracked down harshly on protests.
Or when the did the same to anti-war protestors during the vietnam war.
Or the numerous times they experimented on their own citezens such as MK ultra, The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, or any of the dozens upon dozens of radiation experimentation, like when almost 1000 pregnant mothers were injected with radioactive iron, causing many miscarriages and cancers(and thats not the only time they injected pregnant mothers with radioctive material to see if it fucked up the baby), or when inserting radium rods up the nostrils of school children and then observing how their health declined, or when they dosed hundreds of inuit with radioactive iodine to see its affects on the thyroid.
Like I dont think this makes China’s atrocities any more excusable, but the reverse is true to. The US really isnt much better than China.
Don’t forget operation sea spray! Next time you laugh at someone talking about chemtrails remember the us government actually did chemtrails!
The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June and engaged in bloody clashes with demonstrators attempting to block them, in which many people – demonstrators, bystanders, and soldiers – were killed.
Here’s a video of an interview with Chai Ling recorded on May 28, 1989 with reporter Philip Cunningham. Chai Ling was arguably the most influential leader of the student protesters at Tiananmen Square. In the interview she openly wishes for the soldiers to massacre the students after her instrumental role in blocking attempts by other activists to move the protest back to campuses, all while refusing to sacrifice herself.
Notable quotes from this interview include:-
“You, the Chinese are not worth my struggle. You are not worth my sacrifice”
“The students keep asking what shall we do next? What can we accomplish? I feel so sad, because how can I tell them what we’re actually hoping for is bloodshed - for the moment when the government has no choice but to brazenly butcher the people?”
“Only when the square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes. Only then will they really be united”
“If we allow the [protesters] movement to collapse on its own, then the government will be able to wipe out all the leaders of the movement”
Upon being asked if she will stay in the square herself after urging the students to stay she simply responded, “No, I won’t”.
When the Tiananmen Square incident erupted in violence on June 3rd, Chai Ling escaped from Beijing by train. She was eventually smuggled to Hong Kong via Operation Yellowbird, an MI6/CIA led initiative to extract dissidents who they hoped would form the nucleus of a “Chinese democracy movement in exile”. To my knowledge, no details exist about how and when she made contact with them. She was subsequently invited to study at Princeton on a full scholarship due to her pivotal role in the Tiananmen protests. She studied Politics and International Relations there, eventually picking up an MBA from Harvard. Today, she runs an internet company called Jenzabar that she founded with her husband, the lawyer Robert Maginn, a long time associate of the Republican party, having even served as the chairman of the Massachusetts Republican party between 2011 and 2013. Their company serves more than 1300 higher education institutions worldwide, whom they provide with ERP software.
Straight up disgusting attempt to dismiss what happened at Tienanmen square. Gee I wonder what your opinion on the chinese govt is.
I haven’t stated an opinion either way. I’ve simply provided additional context to a historical event you chose to bring up. Why do you feel the need to respond to it in such a kneejerk manner and ascribe my motives? Does the context I’ve provided make you feel uncomfortable in some way?
I have neither dismissed nor denied that a terrible incident happened at Tiananman square on the late hours of June 3rd 1989. I wish for those responsible for plotting and catalysing the incident to face justice for their crimes.
you and the others feel it’s the best use of time to call out how the US is just as bad. That is telling.
If you’re asking for my personal opinion then I’d say the US is a great deal worse than anything China has done since they took their country back, actually. It’s not even remotely close.
What’s “telling” is the way people such as yourself latch onto anything the western media has to say about America’s geopolitical rivals, in spite of any and all the evidence to the contrary; regardless of the credibility of any of the sources. I mean, are you honestly just going to lap up whatever western media outlets tell you? The guys that told you Iraq undeniably had WMDs? The cynical scum bags who banged the drum about Gaddafi and have subsequently shrugged their shoulders while Libya now wallows with open air slave markets? Those are your respectable sources? You’re going to hang off of every word from weirdo crooks like Adrian Zenz, born-again Christian “China experts” who publicly declare they’re on a mission from God to defeat communism in China? That’s the sort of “impartial” source you’re prepared to die on a hill for? Or maybe its teenagers speculating over satellite photography they pulled up from Google maps?
Here’s something I find telling; that you won’t engage whatsoever with the point I raised in response to you trying to grandstand over the Tiananmen incident; that you swivelled on a dime from gleefully using a massacre as a political football to clutching your pearls that someone dared to bring information to the table that contextualises that event into something more than the simplistic good vs evil narrative you were going for. Do yourself a favour and actually listen to what Chai Ling has to say; it’s been independently verified and held up in a libel case she brought against the journalists when it came to light, so you can rest assured its legitimate. Stop and think about what it really means for the student leader of those killed at Tiananmen to outright admit they were trying to get their supporters massacred after actively blocking attempts to disperse peacefully. Consider the potential significance that she was literally extracted out of her country by the intelligence services of China’s biggest geopolitical rivals. If you’re genuinely appalled with all the death from this event, don’t you think she and her benefactors have something to answer for? Or do you suppose its the place of the United States or Great Britain to stir up trouble in other countries, to dictate who should be in charge there and how their countries should be run?
yeah I don’t have time to debate people who are only interested in downplaying something really fucked up. Sorry – I won’t read this.
You’re just salty that the Western backed color revolution failed in China. You would have loved to cheer the West on in sucking the country dry the same that it did with Russia after they fell for the Western lies. Just compare the life expectency graphs between Russia and China after 1989:
You’re just salty that the Western backed color revolution failed in China. You would have loved to cheer the West on in sucking the country dry the same that it did with Russia after they fell for the Western lies.
Then how come discussion of Tienanman Square is discouraged, if not banned, instead of being widely extolled as successful defiance of the West? Clearly, unless Xi is actually a US plant, the government does not want discussion of it.
Because this issue is used as a battering ram to weaken the Chinese government. The West keeps talking about there being a ‘Tiananmen Massacre’ where unarmed students were killed even though behind closed doors US diplomats admit there was no bloodshed on TIananmen. It is really hard to defend yourself against those accusations which are false when the other side doesn’t need to produce any evidence whatsoever. What is provable are the deaths of the soldiers and maoists fighting in street battles outside the square but that was not a massacre and funnily enough the West also doesn’t like to talk about those deaths
deleted by creator
“China’s life expectancy is great and didn’t suffer at all even from the pandemic!”
Source: China
I know right? It’s amazing what proper governmental response and civic mindedness of the populace can do.
See also: Vietnam, Korea, New Zealand
deleted by creator
The consequences were way better than the let 'er rip nations. If China had a death toll equivalent to the United States, they’d have 5 million dead. Even the “China is lying” people are talking about hundreds of thousands, or possibly a million, not 5 million.
Staying COVID-zero until better treatments and vaccines are available actually does save lives.
This is one of my favorite things about kbin over Reddit. So neat to see gifs in chat.
They’re viewable on Lemmy too!
You could have gifs on Reddit too
Through New Reddit, which was objectively awful.
As if other keyboard apps are any different, I don’t think Microsoft bought SwiftKey just for fun?!
Really? Isn’t this kind of thing scandalous enough to tank companies?
It’s in their EULA read their terms of services
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
The people here acting like their Gboard doesn’t do the same is so funny.
Edit : never used nor installed tiktok.
It probably doesn’t though. Obviously it’s closed source making it harder to tell what’s actually happening, but there’s nothing stopping security analysts from looking at network usage and such. I would imagine that Google doesn’t install a keylogger on every Android phone, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they don’t want the bad publicity and lawsuits when it would inevitably be discovered.
they do collect usage stats by default though.
which include typed sentences passed through their ai model and words usage counts.
it can all be turned off and gboard seems to respect these options. it doesn’t access online services unless requested with these options off.
Same with Microsoft keyboard and almost every other keyboard app.
So use Fcitx 5 Android instead. It’s a open source IME application without requesting any permission except Notification, especially without network permission.
https://github.com/fcitx5-android/fcitx5-android
It’s stories like this that don’t surprise me as much as make me ask: How the fuck do you store and process this much data to get anything useful out of it.
You just save the first 50 digits typed after some email is typed, and you have all the passwords you need!
This only applies if a username is a email
And if it is then what happens when people actually email someone? Autocorrect during login?
I don’t think they’re saying that method would yield 100% clean data but it would give you all the “necessary” data with the absolute bare minimum storage requirement. At some point people will log into their email and for most people if you have their email password you have the password they use for everything
“Notice the lack of surprise.”
Naomi Wu has literally been talking about pwnd Chinese IMEs for years in her sidechannel critiques of Signal.
So when the Chinese do it it’s scary, but when the Americans do it it’s just “established practice”?
Whataboutism doesn’t really apply when pointing out a double standard. It’s true that both places shouldn’t do the bad thing, but it’s more about the individual’s reaction to that thing depending on who does it. The average US citizen will criticise the CCP for doing plenty of the same things their government currently does, or has done in the past, that they support.
Furthermore, it’s important to note that when this kind of thing happens, people treat it as China’s government’s fault, but when Tesla cars explode, people don’t consider that the US government’s fault.
Neither of the groups should be allowed to do it.
But when Usonians do, nothing happens.
Didn’t swiftpad or whatever its called send every key pressed to Microsoft?
Not a China shill. China is horrible. Microsoft less so as they don’t commit genocide in slow motion. But still, I think this sort of thing is more common than we think.
Use FOSS.
What are the best FOSS options for Android keyboard apps? I’ve been struggling with this lately.
I use OpenBoard (it’s available on fDroid. Maybe the play store too).
I don’t know if it’s the best but I like it. If you type in multiple languages you do need to hit a “language switcher” key on the keyboard to switch to the autocorrect for that language. A very minor complaint. Otherwise it’s great.
And it will learn swear words. No more ducking ducks.
I
Can you point to where it says that in the report? It actually says:
an IME will commonly reach out over the network to a cloud-based service for suggestions if suitable suggestions are not available in the input method’s local database.
So it doesn’t send “every key typed”.
Literally says in bold even:
the keystrokes of Sogou Input Method users can be decrypted by a network eavesdropper, informing the eavesdropper of what users are typing as they type.
AKA every keystroke
