"How Ubiquitous Keyboard Software Puts Hundreds of Millions of Chinese Users at Risk"
For millions of Chinese people, the first software they install on a new laptop or smartphone is a keyboard app. However, only some know this may make the text they type vulnerable to eavesdropping. The standard QWERTY keyboard by itself is inefficient since dozens of Chinese characters can share the same latinized phonetic spelling. A localized keyboard app can save time and frustration by predicting the characters and words a user wants to type. About 800 million Chinese people use third-party keyboard apps on different devices. A recent report by the Citizen Lab, a technology and security research group affiliated with the University of Toronto, revealed that Sogou, one of the most popular Chinese keyboard apps, had a significant security flaw. According to the researchers, Sogou's encryption system could be exploited to intercept and decrypt what users were typing in real-time. This article continues to discuss findings regarding the keyboard software putting hundreds of millions of Chinese users at risk.