Apps Marketed to US Troops Are Shipping Chinese and Russian Code
Researchers have discovered that apps marketed to US military personnel contain code from Chinese and Russian companies, posing potential national security risks. These apps can inadvertently expose sensitive location data, which could be exploited by foreign adversaries to track troop movements.
Why it matters
The use of foreign-developed software by military personnel highlights a critical vulnerability in operational security and the risks of the unregulated data-broker economy.
According to researchers at Purdue University, the US Military Academy at West Point, and Florida International University, one popular app used by service members to rate living conditions on their own bases include code from Huawei, the Chinese telecom that US regulators flagged as a national security threat in 2020. Two others were built by Russian companies and incorporate the Russian ad service Yandex.
The largely unregulated advertising industry that tracks Americans online treats civilians and service members mostly the same—unless there is profit in telling them apart—despite evidence that exposure can reveal troop deployments, unit movements, and the routines of personnel within intelligence facilities and hardened shelters where nuclear weapons are believed to be stored.
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