Found a bug in Aarogya Setu App? Modi govt promises Rs 1 lakh bug bounty program, makes it open source

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Tuesday said that the Aarogya Setu app has now been declared as an open-source.

"The Aarogya Setu App is now open-source. Transparency, privacy, and security have been the core design principles of the app since its inception, and opening its source code to the developer company signifies the Government of India's continuing commitment to these principles," said Kant while addressing the media.

"We were always committed to open-sourcing the product. This is a unique thing that has been done because no other government product, anywhere in the world, has been open-sourced at this scale," he said.

He further informed that the Aarogya Setu app reached 50 million subscribers in 15 days and 100 million subscribers in 40 days.

Calling the app's contact tracing ability of the highest order, he said that the app has identified more than 3,000 COVID-19 hotspots.

"More than 3,000 hotspots at sub-post office levels have been predicted in almost 3-17 days ahead of time. The self-assessment has reached out to over 8 lakh people. The app has alerted over 140,000 people of the potential risk of infection through Bluetooth contact," said the Niti Aayog CEO.

"This app has the most reach and impact of the world," he said further.

The decision comes in a bid to allay the privacy concerns regarding the Aarogya Setu app.

The source code for the Android version of the application is available for review and collaboration on Github. The iOS version of the application will be released as open source within the next two weeks and the server code will be released subsequently, an official statement said.

"The key pillars of Aarogya Setu have been transparency, privacy and security and in line with India's policy on Open Source Software, the source code of Aarogya Setu has now been made open source," said the Electronics & IT Ministry statement.

It said that opening the source code to the developer community signifies the government's continuing commitment to the principles of transparency and collaboration.

"With the release of the source code in the public domain, we are looking to expanding collaboration and to leverage the expertise of top technical brains amongst the talented youth and citizens of our nation and to collectively build a robust and secure technology solution to help support the work of frontline health workers in fighting this pandemic together," the statement said.

Almost 98 per cent of Aarogya Setu users are on Android platform, it added.

The government has also announced a bug bounty program for the app, whereby the government will pay a cash price of Rs 1 lakh to any developer who finds bugs or loopholes in the application.

A bug bounty is a reward that is given to any developer who finds flaws or bugs in a software.

And with an open-source, one can have access to the code of application and look for any flaws.