I Downloaded (and Deleted) the White House App So You Don’t Have To. It’s a Hot Mess


The White House has a new app, and what’s hiding in the app’s framework is a privacy and security nightmare. 

The app, literally called “The White House,” is designed to “deliver Unparalleled access to the Trump administration,” according to the White House’s announcement on Friday. But it may come at the cost of your personal data, online security and privacy. 

The app is filled with data sharing and security concerns, including location tracking. Security researchers who looked under the hood reported finding lax protections and sketchy features. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The app is available now for both Android and iOS users, but should you download it? I did (briefly) so you don’t have to. Here’s what’s in the app and why experts are outraged. 

What’s in The White House App?

The app opens with music and a brief collage video of President Donald Trump. It has pages on affordability, including the prices of things like eggs and milk (but not gas). There’s an overtime calculator. And there are links to articles from Trump’s favored news outlets, like Fox News and Newsmax, along with White House press releases.

The app also features livestreams and videos of press briefings, links to the White House’s social feeds and photos of the president.

Why I deleted The White House app so fast 

Behind all those tabs are hair-raising privacy and security issues that have the internet and experts alarmed. 

One X user, @Thereallo1026, decompiled the White House app and blogged about it, reporting that the Android app tracks your location as often as every 4.5 minutes and shares a lot of information, like your location, notifications and perhaps even your phone number, with a third-party server. 

Another red flag is that the code for YouTube embeds comes from a personal GitHub account. Thereallo said that if that GitHub account gets compromised, it can affect every user of the White House’s app. 

Another cybersecurity researcher, Atomic Computer Services, posted similar concerns about the iOS app. The researchers found that the app reported to the App Store that it did not collect location data, when in fact it included the capability to do GPS tracking. It’s unclear whether that tracking actually happens is unclear, but the code is there, Atomic Computer said.

Other concerns identified by Atomic Computer included the removal of privacy consent banners from third-party content viewed in the app and minimal security protections. “We’ve audited apps for startups with three employees that had better security than this,” Atomic Computer wrote.

Government-sponsored apps to inform people are commonplace, but this one poses significant risks, experts said. A spokesperson for the Center for Democracy and Technology, which advocates for transparency and privacy in government technology, told CNET that “mobile apps can be a helpful tool for making government more accessible. But this administration has given people a lot of reasons to worry about their privacy, and this app only raises more questions about what the federal government is doing with our personal data.”

For me, this app is a hard pass. I deleted it 10 minutes after downloading it. 





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Elasticsearch Aggregations – Table of Content

Characteristics

  • It can be formed together to manufacture complex sum up of information. 
  • It tends to be considered as a single unit-of-work that makes analytic data over a bunch of archives which are accessible in elasticsearch. 
  • It is fundamentally based on the building blocks. 
  • Aggregation functions are the same as GROUP BY COUNT and SQL AVERAGE functions.
  • Utilizing aggregation in elasticsearch, can perform GROUP BY aggregation on any numeric field, yet we should type keywords or there must be fielddata = valid for text fields.

Four categories of Aggregations 

Bucket aggregations

Bucketing is a group of aggregations, which is liable for building buckets. It doesn’t figure metrics over the fields like metric collection. Each pail is related with a key and a report. It is utilized to gather or make information buckets. These information buckets can be made dependent on the current fields, ranges, and altered filters, and so on.

Metric aggregations

These aggregations help in processing matrices from the field’s estimations of the collected reports and at some point a few values can be produced from contents. Numeric matrices can either be single-valued like average aggregation or multi-valued like stats.

Pipeline aggregations

It takes contributions from the yield of different aggregations. Pipeline aggregations are liable for assembling the yield of different aggregations.

Matrix aggregations

Matrix collection is an aggregation that works on different fields. It deals with more than one field and creates a matrix result out of the values, that is extricated from the solicitation record fields. It doesn’t uphold scripting. 

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Types of Aggregations

1. Filter Aggregation

The filter aggregation assists with separating the archives in a solitary bucket. Its fundamental reason for existing is to give the best outcomes to its clients by sifting the archive. We should take a guide to channel the reports dependent on “fees” and “Admission year”. It will restore archives that coordinate with the conditions determined in the query. You can filter the report utilizing any field you need.

POST student/ _search/  

{  

       "query": {    

            "bool": {  

                "filter": [  

                     { "term": { "fees": "22900" } },  

                     { "term": { "Admission year": "2019" } },  

                 ]  

           }  

    }  

}  

Response

{   

"took": 5,  

"timed_out": false,  

"_shards": {  

"total": 1,  

"successful": 1,  

"skipped": 0,  

"failed": 0  

},  

"hits": {  

                   "total": {  

  "value": 1,  

  "relation": "eq"  

           },  

"max_score": 0,  

"hits": [ ]  

{  

         "index": "student",  

          "type": "_doc",  

         "id": "02",  

         "score": 1,  

         "_source": {  

  "name ": "Jose Fernandez",  

 "dob": "07/Aug/1996",  

 "course": "Bcom (H)",  

 "Admission year": "2019",  

  "email": "jassf@gmail.com",  

 "street": "4225 Ersel Street",   

  "state": "Texas",   

 "country": "United States",   

  "zip": "76011",  

  "fees": "22900"  

                   }  

             }  

         ]  

      }  

}  

2. Terms Aggregation

The terms aggregation is liable for producing buckets by the field esteems. By choosing a field (like name, admission year, and so forth), it creates the buckets. Determine the aggregation name in query while making an inquiry. Execute the accompanying code to look through the values assembled by admission year field:

POST student/ _search/  

{  

   "size": 0,    

    "aggs": {    

       "group_by_Admission year": {  

               "terms" : {   

                    "field": "Admission year.keyword"  

                }  

          }  

    }  

}  

By executing the above code, it  will be returned as a group by admission year. The output is as follows.

Output

{   

"took": 179,  

"timed_out": false,  

"_shards": {  

"total": 1,  

"successful": 1,  

"skipped": 0,  

"failed": 0  

},  

"hits": {  

                   "total": {  

 "value": 3,  

 "relation": "eq"  

          },  

"max_score": null,  

"hits": [ ]  

},  

  "aggregations":  {  

         "group_by_Addmission year": {  

             "student1",  

             "doc_count_error_upper_bound": 0,  

             "sum_other_doc_count": 0,  

              "buckets": [  

              {  

      "key ": "2019",  

      "doc_count": 2   

 },  

 {  

      "key": "2018",  

      "doc_count": 1  

}  

                  ]  

          }  

     }  

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3. Nested Aggregation

A nested aggregation permits you to assemble a field with nested reports, a field that has numerous sub-fields.A unique single bucket aggregation that empowers accumulating nested archives. For instance, let’s state we have a list of products, and every item holds the list of resellers, each having its own cost for the item.  Resellers is an array that holds nested documents. The mapping could resemble:

PUT /products

{

  "mappings": {

    "properties": {

      "resellers": { 

        "type": "nested",

        "properties": {

          "reseller": { "type": "text" },

          "price": { "type": "double" }

        }

      }

    }

  }

}

The following request adds a product with two resellers:

PUT /products/_doc/0

{

  "name": "LED TV", 

  "resellers": [

    {

      "reseller": "companyA",

      "price": 350

    },

    {

      "reseller": "companyB",

      "price": 500

    }

  ]

}

The following request returns the minimum price a product can be purchased for:

GET /products/_search

{

  "query": {

    "match": { "name": "led tv" }

  },

  "aggs": {

    "resellers": {

      "nested": {

        "path": "resellers"

      },

      "aggs": {

        "min_price": { "min": { "field": "resellers.price" } }

      }

    }

  }

}

Output

{

  ...

  "aggregations": {

    "resellers": {

      "doc_count": 2,

      "min_price": {

        "value": 350

      }

    }

  }

 }

4. Cardinality Aggregation

This aggregation gives the tally of distinct values in a specific field. It helps to find a unique value for a field. 

POST /schools/_search?size=0

{

   "aggs":{

      "distinct_name_count":{"cardinality":{"field":"fees"}}

   }

}

On running the above code, we get the following result,

Output

{

   "took" : 2,

   "timed_out" : false,

   "_shards" : {

      "total" : 1,

      "successful" : 1,

      "skipped" : 0,

      "failed" : 0

   },

   "hits" : {

      "total" : {

         "value" : 2,

         "relation" : "eq"

      },

      "max_score" : null,

      "hits" : [ ]

   },

   "aggregations" : {

      "distinct_name_count" : {

         "value" : 2

      }

   }

}

The value of cardinality is 2 because there are two distinct values in fees.

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5. Extended Stats Aggregation

This aggregation produces all the statistics about a particular mathematical field in collected documents. 

POST /schools/_search?size=0

{

   "aggs" : {

      "fees_stats" : { "extended_stats" : { "field" : "fees" } }

   }

}

On running the above code, we get the following result,

Output

{

   "took" : 8,

   "timed_out" : false,

   "_shards" : {

      "total" : 1,

      "successful" : 1,

      "skipped" : 0,

      "failed" : 0

   },

   "hits" : {

      "total" : {

         "value" : 2,

         "relation" : "eq"

      },

      "max_score" : null,

      "hits" : [ ]

   },

   "aggregations" : {

      "fees_stats" : {

         "count" : 2,

         "min" : 2200.0,

         "max" : 3500.0,

         "avg" : 2850.0,

         "sum" : 5700.0,

         "sum_of_squares" : 1.709E7,

         "variance" : 422500.0,

         "std_deviation" : 650.0,

         "std_deviation_bounds" : {

            "upper" : 4150.0,

            "lower" : 1550.0

         }

      }

   }

}

6. Stats Aggregation

A multi-value metrics aggregation that figures statistics over numeric values removed from the aggregated reports. It is a multi-value numeric matrix aggregation that helps to create sum, avg, max, min, and count in a single shot. The query structure is the same as the other aggregation

POST /schools/_search?size=0

{

   "aggs" : {

      "grades_stats" : { "stats" : { "field" : "fees" } }

   }

}

On running the above code, we get the following result,

Output

{

   "took" : 2,

   "timed_out" : false,

   "_shards" : {

      "total" : 1,

      "successful" : 1,

      "skipped" : 0,

      "failed" : 0

   },

   "hits" : {

      "total" : {

         "value" : 2,

         "relation" : "eq"

      },

      "max_score" : null,

      "hits" : [ ]

   },

   "aggregations" : {

      "grades_stats" : {

         "count" : 2,

         "min" : 2200.0,

         "max" : 3500.0,

         "avg" : 2850.0,

         "sum" : 5700.0

      }

   }

}

Avg Aggregation

This collection is utilized to get the avg of any numeric field present in the collected records. 

POST /schools/_search

{

   "aggs":{

      "avg_fees":{"avg":{"field":"fees"}}

   }

}

On running the above code, we get the following result −

Output

{

   "took" : 41,

   "timed_out" : false,

   "_shards" : {

      "total" : 1,

      "successful" : 1,

      "skipped" : 0,

      "failed" : 0

   },

   "hits" : {

      "total" : {

         "value" : 2,

         "relation" : "eq"

      },

      "max_score" : 1.0,

      "hits" : [

         {

            "_index" : "schools",

            "_type" : "school",

            "_id" : "5",

            "_score" : 1.0,

            "_source" : {

               "name" : "Central School",

               "description" : "CBSE Affiliation",

               "street" : "Nagan",

               "city" : "paprola",

               "state" : "HP",

               "zip" : "176115",

               "location" : [

                  31.8955385,

                  76.8380405

               ],

            "fees" : 2200,

            "tags" : [

               "Senior Secondary",

               "beautiful campus"

            ],

            "rating" : "3.3"

         }

      },

      {

         "_index" : "schools",

         "_type" : "school",

         "_id" : "4",

         "_score" : 1.0,

         "_source" : {

            "name" : "City Best School",

            "description" : "ICSE",

            "street" : "West End",

            "city" : "Meerut",

            "state" : "UP",

            "zip" : "250002",

            "location" : [

               28.9926174,

               77.692485

            ],

            "fees" : 3500,

            "tags" : [

               "fully computerized"

            ],

            "rating" : "4.5"

         }

      }

   ]

 },

   "aggregations" : {

      "avg_fees" : {

         "value" : 2850.0

      }

   }

}

Max Aggregation

This aggregation finds the maximum value of a particular numeric field in collected archives. 

POST /schools/_search?size=0

{

   "aggs" : {

   "max_fees" : { "max" : { "field" : "fees" } }

   }

}

On running the above code, we get the following result −

Output

{

   "took" : 16,

   "timed_out" : false,

   "_shards" : {

      "total" : 1,

      "successful" : 1,

      "skipped" : 0,

      "failed" : 0

   },

  "hits" : {

      "total" : {

         "value" : 2,

         "relation" : "eq"

      },

      "max_score" : null,

      "hits" : [ ]

   },

   "aggregations" : {

      "max_fees" : {

         "value" : 3500.0

      }

   }

}

Min Aggregation

This aggregation finds the maximum value of a particular numeric field in collected archives. 

POST /schools/_search?size=0

{

   "aggs" : {

      "min_fees" : { "min" : { "field" : "fees" } }

   }

}

On running the above code, we get the following result −

Output

{

   "took" : 2,

   "timed_out" : false,

   "_shards" : {

      "total" : 1,

      "successful" : 1,

      "skipped" : 0,

      "failed" : 0

   },

   "hits" : {

      "total" : {

         "value" : 2,

         "relation" : "eq"

      },

      "max_score" : null,

      "hits" : [ ]

   },

  "aggregations" : {

      "min_fees" : {

         "value" : 2200.0

      }

   }

}

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Sum Aggregation

This aggregation finds the maximum value of a particular numeric field in collected archives.

POST /schools/_search?size=0

{

   "aggs" : {

      "total_fees" : { "sum" : { "field" : "fees" } }

   }

}

On running the above code, we get the following result −

Output

{

   "took" : 8,

   "timed_out" : false,

   "_shards" : {

      "total" : 1,

      "successful" : 1,

      "skipped" : 0,

      "failed" : 0

   },

   "hits" : {

      "total" : {

         "value" : 2,

         "relation" : "eq"

      },

      "max_score" : null,

      "hits" : [ ]

   },

   "aggregations" : {

      "total_fees" : {

         "value" : 5700.0

      }

   }

}

7. Aggregation Metadata

You can add some information about the aggregation at the hour of solicitation by utilizing meta tag and can get that accordingly.

POST /schools/_search?size=0

{

   "aggs" : {

      "min_fees" : { "avg" : { "field" : "fees" } ,

         "meta" :{

            "dsc" :"Lowest Fees This Year"

         }

      }

   }

}

On running the above code, we get the following result −

Output

{

   "took" : 0,

   "timed_out" : false,

   "_shards" : {

      "total" : 1,

      "successful" : 1,

      "skipped" : 0,

      "failed" : 0

   },

   "hits" : {

      "total" : {

         "value" : 2,

         "relation" : "eq"

      },

      "max_score" : null,

      "hits" : [ ]

   },

   "aggregations" : {

      "min_fees" : {

         "meta" : {

            "dsc" : "Lowest Fees This Year"

         },

         "value" : 2850.0

      }

   }

}

Conclusion

The different types of aggregations have their own purpose and functions. We have discussed it in detail about it using the coding examples. There exists metrics aggregations that are used in particular cases such as geo bounds aggregation and geo centroid aggregation to get the understanding of geo location. You could understand the concept of aggregation through the examples provided.

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