Skip to main content

Tinder App is Now Perfectly Encrypted

Back in January this year, popular match-making app Tinder was found to be vulnerable to attacks by hackers, who could easily steal users’ pictures over a public Wi-Fi. Although Tinder fixed the vulnerability a month later, it has now added better safeguards including complete encryption of data transferred between the users’ handsets and its servers.

Tinder addressed the issue in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden who had requested the company to encrypt photographs on the platform. The senator had appealed Tinder to strengthen its security after an Isreali startup Checkmarx demonstrated the ease of stealing users’ pictures as well as completely taking over their feed using a simple tool called “TinderDrift”.

Before Tinder fixed the issue pointed out by Checkmarx, only text-based information on the meetup app was encrypted while pictures were transferred over an insecure HTTP connection. This made stealing users’ pictures very easy. Moreover, the encrypted text data could also be distinguished easily based on the size of the command. For instance, hackers could identify if you’ve swiped right or left on a particular user, could predict matches, and snoop on other activity.

Tinder made a quick move and encrypted photos in February itself, it has now normalized the size of commands, would otherwise allow hackers to know virtually everything about users’ movements on the app, including their sexual preferences, and what they were talking about.

After encrypting images back in February, Tinder also fixed another vulnerability in the app which would allow hackers to sabotage accounts of users using their phone numbers linked to their Facebook accounts. For this, Tinder and Facebook awarded the researchers of $1,250 and $5,000 respectively as a bug bounty reward for discovering the flaw.

Now that the Tinder app is perfectly sealed, you can continue to find new friends or the love of your life. You can also seek “long-term relationships” using Facebook’s yet-to-arrive dating feature, which was promised at the F8 Conference last month – although we haven’t heard more about it since the announcement.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i Review: A Powerful Workhorse

It’s been quite some time since Intel announced its 11th-gen laptop processors, complete with the new logo design and Intel Iris Xe graphics. And yet, so far I’ve not gotten my hands on a laptop packing the new processor and iGPU. That all changed when Lenovo sent over the IdeaPad Slim 5i (Rs. 61,990) with […] The article Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i Review: A Powerful Workhorse was first published on Beebom
Post a Comment
Read more

Twitter Wants to Build an ‘Open and Decentralized’ Social Media Platform

In an attempt to create a Facebook competitor, which everyone flocks to, Twitter became increasingly centralized over the years. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey believes that’s the case and has now tweeted a lengthy plan to fund research to build an open and decentralized standard for social media platforms. It will “ultimately become a standard” that Twitter’s client will be based upon. Dubbed Bluesky, this project will see a team of up to five researchers , which could include open-source architects, engineers, and designers, being on-boarded in the near future. Currently, Bluesky has no team members but Dorsey tweeted that Twitter’s CTO Parag Agrawal has been tasked with finding a lead. The folks over at Firefox have already extended a helping hand, saying how the non-profit has contributed to decentralization. Enough jibber-jabber, but what exactly is Bluesky? And what does it intend to achieve? Dorsey, in his tweetstorm , states that the challenges being faced by centralized social
Post a Comment
Read more

Mysterious Drones Spotted in Colorado and Nebraska; Sources Unknown

A group of drones was reportedly been spotted in the sky at night last week in Colorado and Nebraska that made the residents anxious and worried. The police officials in charge have no idea regarding where these drones are from. “They’ve been doing a grid search, a grid pattern. They fly one square and then they fly another square,”  Colorado’s Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliot told the Denver Post. The drones have an approximate six-foot wingspan and stay 200 to 300 feet away from buildings. At least 17 drones have been spotted till now. They appear at around 7 PM at night and disappear at around 10 PM . Until now, the drones have not been caught doing any illegal or unofficial activities.  “They do not seem to be malicious. They don’t seem to be doing anything that would indicate criminal activity,” Sheriff Elliott added. The Federal Aviation Agency, the Air Force, Drug Enforcement Administration, and US Army Forces Command confirmed that the drones did not belong to them.
Post a Comment
Read more