Turns out there’s no such TikTok allowed in the Navy, as the military arm has banned the popular social media app from government issued mobile devices over cybersecurity concerns, as reported by The Guardian. “A bulletin issued by the Navy on Tuesday showed up on a Facebook page serving military members, saying users of government issued mobile devices who had TikTok and did not remove the app would be blocked from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet,” reported The Guardian and Reuters.
“The Navy would not describe in detail what dangers the app presents, but Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Uriah Orland said in a statement the order was part of an effort to ‘address existing and emerging threats’.” Vulnerabilities in the app were discovered by cybersecurity firm Check Point. ““The vulnerabilities we found were all core to TikTok’s systems,” said Oded Vanunu, Check Point’s head of product vulnerability research,” reported The New York Times.
Recently, The Department of Homeland Security also issued a cyber alert for users of Mozilla Firefox to update their software, citing security concerns. “An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system,” read the Cyber-Infrastructure website of The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (CISA) website. “This vulnerability was detected in exploits in the wild.”
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/technology/tiktok-security-flaws.html
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/current-activity/2020/01/08/mozilla-patches-critical-vulnerability
