COVID-19 has caused the entire world to come to a standstill. While many countries are focusing on battling this global pandemic with lockdown and social distancing as primary approaches. Pakistan’s National Ministry of Information Technology came up with detecting and tracking app to tackle COVID-19.
How it works?
The COVID app allows us to show the number of COVID positive patients in an area of 30-300 radius. Not only this through this app a COVID Positive patient can also mark themselves affected and save other lives in their locality.
As the situation prevails the idea of such an app seems life-saving and a great accomplishment. However, the main question is, will this app work as good as it sounds, or is it actually failing?
Is it failing?
Since its launch, a major problem in the app, that has been identified by many it fails to be secure. Not only does it have insecure connections and hardcoded passwords, rather it is failing to provide ease to the citizens. An increase in the risk of privacy issues, many of the people in Pakistan prefer to avoid using the application.
Baptiste Robert who tweets with a pseudonym Elliot Anderson pointed out that the app is not at all okay and requires a lot of reconstruction and fixing.
2/ This app, made by the Ministry of IT and Telecom with National Information Technology Board, is available on the PlayStore and has been downloaded more than 500,000 times.https://t.co/bdh1uimzan
— Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y) June 9, 2020
In his view, the app is still not fit for use. There are no security checks, no proper connections and this can be an invasion of a lot of people’s privacy and personal lives. Further on in his tweet, he said, that the messages that are sent to the server are not secure either.
4/ When you open the app, it asks a token to the pak gov server with hardcoded credentials: CovidAppUser / CovidApi!@#890# pic.twitter.com/tK2IzxzfkM
— Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y) June 9, 2020
What’s more terrifying is will the Ministry of Information Technology takes any action. Or will this review also go down the drain like many other things? Although Fawad Chaudhry has been vocal and working a great deal in the ministry, especially with the idea of a new Islamic calendar and no moon-sighting practices, it is still unclear what will his narrative be on the COVID app.
We hope that he is able to find a solution and we as a whole nation are able to get rid of COVID-19 once and for all.
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