Apple and Google Strengthen Privacy in Joint Virus Exposure Tech
Apple and Google update their joint coronavirus contact tracing system with stronger privacy protections and new developer flexibility. The companies now call the technology "exposure notification" to better clarify its specific role.
Apple and Google update their joint coronavirus contact tracing system with stronger privacy protections and new flexibility for developers. The tech giants now exclusively refer to the technology as "exposure notification" to clarify that it represents only one part of a broader contact tracing effort. These latest modifications aim to make the system more secure while helping health authorities build more effective applications.
The companies significantly change the cryptography mechanism that generates the keys used to trace potential contacts. Instead of deriving rotating keys from a permanent tracing key tied to a device, the system now generates these keys completely randomly. This change eliminates a theoretical vulnerability where a highly sophisticated attack could potentially track an individual by reverse-engineering the key generation process.
Additional privacy measures include the encryption of Bluetooth signal metadata, such as signal strength and other radio characteristics. While this metadata alone poses little risk, malicious actors could theoretically combine it with known device profiles to identify users. By encrypting this information, Apple and Google ensure that the exposure notification system does not link any tracing data to an individual's identity.