A Campaign App's Bug Allows Hackers to Access Millions of Americans' Sensitive Voter Info

A new bug from a campaign app was discovered, thus, affecting the official campaign app of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. A security researcher said that the issue could allow anyone to access millions of Americans' sensitive voter information.

"Vote Joe" campaign app allows his supporters to upload their phone contact lists to see if their family members and friends are registered. This feature gives them a chance to encourage their family members and friends to vote in the upcoming United States presidential election.

The campaign app uploads and matches the user's contacts with voter info provided by TargetSmart, a political marketing firm that claims to have more than 191 million Americans' voter files. It would display the voters' age, birthday, name, and even the recent election they voted in, once there is a match.

The app then would tell its users to find other people they know and encourage them to get involved with the election. Although the users' data could already be in public, the new bug makes it easier for anyone, especially for hackers and other cyber attackers, to access voter information.

A mobile expert under the name of "The App Analyst," used the bug. He created a contact on his phone with a random voter's name and found out that he could trick the campaign app into providing anyone's information.

The bug could pull out far more detailed and private info the what the app displays

The security expert claims that the app now provides more sensitive information than what it should display because of the bug. He explained that far more private and detailed info, including date of birth, ethnicity, gender, political party affiliation, and home address, was provided after he intercepted the data that flows in and out of the device.

To fix the current issue, the Biden campaign team released an update on Friday, Sept. 11.

"We were made aware about how our third-party app developer was providing additional fields of information from commercially available data that was not needed," said Matt Hill, Joe Biden campaign's spokesperson.

Hill added that they quickly fixed the bug and removed the information that was released. He said that their campaign team is committed to protecting their volunteers, supporters, and staff's privacy.

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Written by: Giuliano de Leon.