www.nsb.gov.tw
In recent years, the international community has shown growing concerns over cybersecurity issues deriving from China-developed mobile applications (apps). Governments and independent research institutions worldwide have already issued warnings concerning data breaches in users’ communication security. To prevent China from illegally acquiring personal data of Taiwan’s nationals, National Security Bureau (NSB) has reviewed cybersecurity reports from countries around the world and organized relevant information, as per the National Intelligence Work Act. Subsequently, the NSB informed and coordinated with the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) under the National Police Agency to conduct random inspection on several China-developed mobile apps. The results indicate the existence of security issues, including excessive data collection and privacy infringement. The public is advised to exercise caution when choosing mobile apps.

The 5 China-developed apps selected for inspection, consisting of rednote, Weibo, TikTok, WeChat, and Baidu Cloud, are widely used by Taiwanese nationals. The MJIB and CIB adopted the Basic Information Security Testing Standard for Mobile Applications v4.0 announced by the Ministry of Digital Affairs, and evaluated the apps against 15 indicators under 5 categories of violation, consisting of personal data collection, excessive permission usage, data transmission and sharing, system information extraction, and biometric data access.

All 5 apps have shown serious violations across multiple inspection indicators. Notably, the rednote fails to meet all 15 inspection standards. Weibo and TikTok violate 13 indicators, separately, as well as 10 for WeChat and 9 for Baidu Cloud. These findings suggest that the said China-made apps present cybersecurity risks far beyond the reasonable expectations for data-collection requirement taken by ordinary apps.

All 5 China-made apps are found to have security issues of excessively collecting personal data and abusing system permissions. The violations include unauthorized access to facial recognition data, screenshots, clipboard contents, contact lists, and location information. As to the category of system information extraction, all apps were found to collect data such as application lists and device parameters. Furthermore, as far as biometric data are concerned, users’ facial features may be deliberately harvested and stored by those apps.

With regard to data transmission and sharing, the said 5 apps were found to send packets back to servers located in China. This type of transmission has raised serious concerns over the potential misuse of personal data by third parties. Under China’s Cybersecurity Law and National Intelligence Law, Chinese enterprises are obligated to turn over user data to competent authorities concerning national security, public security, and intelligence. Such a practice would pose a significant security breach to the privacy of Taiwanese users, which could lead to data collection by specific Chinese agencies.

A wide range of countries, such as the US, Canada, the UK, and India, have already publicly issued warnings against or bans on specific China-developed apps. The European Union has also launched investigations under the General Data Protection Regulation framework into suspected data theft involving certain China-made apps. Substantial amount of fines are imposed in those cases. In response to the cybersecurity threats, the Taiwanese government has prohibited the use of Chinese-brand products regarding computer and communications technology within official institutions. Both software and hardware are included.

The NSB coordinates with the MJIB and CIB to test the 5 inspected China-developed apps, and confirms that widespread cybersecurity vulnerabilities indeed exist. The NSB strongly advises the public to remain vigilant regarding mobile device security and avoid downloading China-made apps that pose cybersecurity risks, so as to protect personal data privacy and corporate business secrets.

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