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Re:Guy Who Reverse-Engineered TikTok Reveals the Scary Thing... by Cthulhu_ on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @06:03AM (#23688467)
It's a smoking gun, and there's a lot of people that have the ability to replicate the "study" and present their findings. That's the scientific method; don't trust the findings? Do your own investigation.
Re:Guy Who Reverse-Engineered TikTok Reveals the Scary Thing... by bluesign on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @06:36AM (#23688684)
It is not "smoking gun", it is not scientific, it is not even "study". This is more likely screaming "fire!" in theatre.

Also what you suggested is not symmetric, let me explain:

- There is a claim tiktok is downloading some zip file, extracting and executing.

making this claim is almost free, for me to claim otherwise, requires to reverse engineer all the app, then check 100s of possibilities to execute code in android app.

For example I took a quick look, and couldn't find anything related to this claim.

Also I checked reports from some "security" companies, there is nothing concrete there too. Mostly they talk about some SDK from appsflyer, which is used by a lot of apps, getting a lot of data, including IMSI etc (which is a US company btw)

But if you still ask me if it is running downloaded code, I cannot say 100% certain "no".

I believe claims should need proof, not the other way around.