The latest on TikTok in the US

What’s going on with TikTok? On September 27th, 2020, a federal judge gave a temporary injunction against the TikTok ban imposed by President Trump. The ruling was made in an attempt to aid in a trade deal between Oracle, Bytenance, TikTok, and Walmart. The deal would hand off US operations so that the app could stay functional after the ban is complete.

Why?

If a deal isn’t made, the app will eventually cease to function. It’ll stay on any devices that have it downloaded, but it will eventually stop connecting to the social media platform.

Is there really any threat?

Well, yeah. There was actually news of this all over the tech world well before we heard anything about this in the political realm. What happened originally was that a security flaw was found in the app that allowed it to have access to the smart device’s clipboard, i.e. anything you copy and paste. When notified of the flaw, TikTok said they had since fixed the security hole, and resubmitted a new version of the app as an update. Here’s where things really start to raise red flags - they lied. They said that the hole was patched, and it was not. Why is that a big deal, you wonder? Passwords. The most secure passwords are copied and pasted - nobody is going to remember 3@kGF4*[hjPz0>Q nor will they want to type it out every time. Where do the most secure passwords get used? The most secure bank accounts, servers, and governmental databases. Because of the lie, the fact that the app is Chinese, the recent tensions between the US and China over the trade war, and what we here at Digital Wave see working in the IT field, it’s not out of the question that what happened with TikTok was an intentional security attack.