South Korea requires minors to have content filtering apps installed on their phones. A security audit of two child monitoring apps—Cyber Security Zone and Smart Dream—finds serious security and privacy issues that put children at risk.

A second audit of South Korea’s Smart Sheriff application reveals that there are numerous unresolved vulnerabilities that put minor children and parental users of the application at serious risk.

The Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto is releasing a new report, “Are the Kids Alright? Digital Risks to Minors from South Korea’s Smart Sheriff Application.” The report details results of two independent audits of the privacy and security of Smart Sheriff, a parental monitoring application that has been promoted by the South Korean government.

오늘 토론토 대학교 뭉크스쿨 글로벌상황연구소 산하 시티즌랩 (Munk School of Global Affairs, Citizen Lab)에서는 새로운 보고서 “우리의 아이들은 안전한가? 청소년들을 디지털 위험에 노출시키는 한국의 스마트보안관 앱(Are the Kids Alright? Digital Risks to Minors from South Korea’s Smart Sheriff Application)”을 발표한다. 동 보고서는 한국 정부가 권장하는 유해정보 차단 소프트웨어인 “스마트보안관”의 프라이버시 보호 정도 및 보안성에 대한 독립적인 두 건의 감사 결과를 상세하게 서술하고 있다.

This report describes the results of two independent security audits of Smart Sheriff, one by researchers who collaborated at the 2015 Citizen Lab Summer Institute (held at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto), and the other by the auditing firm Cure53. The combined audits identified twenty-six security vulnerabilities in recent versions of Smart Sheriff (versions 1.7.5 and under). These vulnerabilities could be leveraged by a malicious actor to take control of nearly all Smart Sheriff accounts and disrupt service operations.