Apps targeted at US troops contain Chinese and Russian code

A Purdue-led study examined over 220 military-focused apps from Google Play and related subreddits and found that 64% included third-party SDKs (analytics/ads) and 40% collected or shared more data than disclosed; SDKs traced to multiple countries — including ones the Pentagon considers adversarial — appeared in roughly 7% of apps and Huawei's HMS Core was present in 12 apps (some used by state National Guard). The researchers observed no active data exfiltration to Huawei, but warned that SDKs can be updated remotely or be included unknowingly via dependencies, creating a supply-chain/privacy risk for military-affiliated users.