Old MacDonald and His Hackable Smartphone Application: A Security and Privacy Analysis of Android Agriculture Applications

The food and agriculture sector is a critical component of the United States’ infrastructure, supporting food and national security, as well as economic stability. However, the sector’s increasing adoption of technologies connected to the Internet has introduced both operational efficiencies and significant cybersecurity risks to the sector. Despite the widespread use of smartphones among farmers increasing from 77% in 2021 to 82% in 2023, minimal research has examined the security and privacy implications of agricultural smartphone applications, potentially used on these devices. Hence, this study investigates whether Android agricultural applications expose farmers to cybersecurity threats by analyzing 31 applications for security vulnerabilities, data transmission practices, and third-party data sharing. The results show that some applications contain critical security vulnerabilities, including the transmission of sensitive data over unencrypted channels, the presence of previously known coding issues, and potential data exposure to external entities.