After facing criticism for privacy, NITI Aayog has made its contact tracing app “Aarogya Setu” open source. The source code of the Android version has been erased that accounts for 98 percent of its total userbase. The source code of iOS and KaiOS versions will also be released in the coming days. Source code will be available on Github starting May 26.
NIC has also announced a bug bounty program that will reward researchers for finding flaws in the app. Researchers can earn up to Rs. 1 lakh for finding security vulnerabilities within the app. Additional Rs. 1 Lakh reward has also been announced for code improvement.
“I just want to point out that this is a very very unique thing to be done,” said NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant. “No other government product anywhere in the world has been open-sourced at this scale anywhere in the world.:”
He also noted that the app has already helped more than 1,40,000 people by alerting them about the potential risk of the coronavirus.
Aarogya Setu App is the fastest growing mobile app that has already marked 100 million registered users in just 41 days after the launch.
After the release of Arogya Setu, Several researchers claimed to find some kind of issues, but none was series in nature. But Government doesn’t want to take any risk when the app aims to be on more than 1 billion devices. Making the app opensource and announcing the bug bounty program is a welcome move.
