It's real. But according to French security researcher who goes by the name Elliot Alderson on Twitter, it is also a joke. "The Kimbho app is clearly a joke," Elliot told India Today Tech. But before we talk about why he said so, let's bring in some context.
What is Kimbho and why are we talking about it? It's a messaging app apparently developed by Baba Ramdev's Patanjali Communications to take on Facebook-owned WhatsApp, which now has over 200 million users in India. While the idea of taking on WhatsApp with an Indian app made by Indians for Indians sounds fairly benign, the execution has not been good so far. Within 24 hours after it became available, Kimbhovanished from both Apple and Google app stores. Kimbho in an official statement noted that the app was down from Google Play Store because it wasn't able to cope up with the high number of users.
"We are facing extremely high traffic on Kimbho. We are in process of upgrading our servers and will be back shortly. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please stay tuned," notes Kimbho in its statement.
But not everyone is buying this argument. And there are reasons. One, Kimbho app wasn't deemed too safe. Many, including Elliot, showed it was full of bugs. Two, many have alleged that it was a copy of another chat app called Bolo Messenger.
Elliot calls the Kimbho statement a lie. "This is a lie of course," he says. "If you have a high demand you set up new serves and not pull down the application." Not only Kimbho has pulled down the app from Google Play store, but also from its official website.
Elliot was among the first ones to discover and point out the loopholes in the security system of Patanjali's Kimbho chat app. In a series of tweets, he said that it was very easy for him to "bypass the verification process" of Kimbho and access all the user data. "You can generate the security code that you want by just a single http request and that's how you can bypass the verification process when you setup the app for the first time," explained Alderson.
NOT EASY TO TAKE ON WHATSAPP
Patanjali launched the Kimbho app to take on WhatsApp, which is currently the most popular and most used messaging app in India. The problem is that it is not easy to take on WhatsApp. Elliot says that at least Kimbho can't do it. "Clearly no," he says. "Making a secure chat app is very complicated. It takes a lot of effort, money and talented engineers to make a secure app."
Ideally, the developers at Patanjali Communications, which made Kimbho, should clean the app first. Before bringing the app back online, Alderson believes, "Kimbho should clean their app first, then test the security with experts or professionals, and conduct alpha and beta tests." It is only after following these processes that Patanjali Communications should make the app available to download for everyone.
AND THE REAL PROBLEM IS...
Alderson also highlighted the real problem behind the security issues, and why users shouldn't use the app, at least until Kimbho fixes all the bugs, and builds a secure platform for the users.
Thousands of people downloaded the Kimbho app on Wednesday night. If you are one of them and are using the app, you should stop right away. In fact, Elliot says that you should delete the right away if you don't want your personal data like chats with friends, phone number that you give to sign in to the app and more to be accessed by others. There are bugs in the app that can expose data to other users.
Then there are issues with how much of an overlap there is between the Kimbho app and the Bolo Messenger. Some people and Elliot is one of them, say that it is a copy paste. "Copy pasting a random app is the level 0 for any developer," said Alderson.
KIMBHO OVER WHATSAPP? NOT FOR NOW
If you are planning to use Kimbho, you can't probably do it right now. It's not available for download, although if you looking for it you may end up with some fake APK, so you should stay away from it.
If you already have it, even then you should uninstall it and not use it. Reasons are explained above.
Keep on using WhatsApp, even if it is not a "swadeshi" app. But at least it is fairly safe. And usable.
Maybe one day Kimbho will be good. But right now it is a mess. I used Kimbho for a day (on a test phone) and wasn't impressed with the user experience at all. It looked a lot like Hangouts. First, the app seemed extremely slow to me, unlike WhatsApp. It takes ages to deliver messages. There are lots of bugs that Kimbho will need to fix like the delay in sending or receiving messages, last seen time, there is no easy way to find out contacts already on Kimbho, I also found the "ghost feature" that Kimbho talked about weird.
I also tried video calls via Kimbho and it wasn't as smooth as WhatsApp, same goes for voice calls. The interesting bit about the app is it lets you send text messages to people who are not in the app. The cartoon stickers it has are pretty good though. That was the only saving grace.
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