The Paytm Android App is Asking for Root Access, Again

Earlier last month we reported that the Paytm app was asking for root privileges on Android devices. At first, when we approached Paytm support regarding the issue, we received a rather absurd response that the app was requesting root privileges to obtain device details and OS version.

However, when researcher Baptiste Robert aka Elliot Anderson posed the same question to the company, Deepak Abbot, SVP at Paytm, released an official statement saying that the app was requesting root access to simply alert the user.

A few days later, the company contacted Robert aka Anderson again and stated that they had rolled out a fix for the issue and the app wouldn’t be asking for root permission again. The company stated:

“We were informed a fix has been released, but it will take a few hours for the update to take effect on all clients…The fix does not require a new app on the play store, the engineering team pushed a config change to not make the su request.”

Following that, we reviewed the app once again and the issue was gone.

Now, it appears as if the config change has relapsed after the latest update and the app is asking for root permissions again. Our reader Divyang Seth pointed out this anomaly and it got us checking the latest version of the app.

We tested the app on a rooted OnePlus 5T and received the same pop-up that was removed earlier. The issue popped up after the app was updated to version 6.6.4 which was released recently.

We’ve tried reaching out to Paytm regarding the issue, and will update the story as soon as we receive any response from the company.