Security and Privacy of Contact Tracing Protocols for COVID-19

Contact tracing is a way to track people who have been in contact with infected patients of COVID-19 and thereby effective control is achieved. Various countries have developed their own contact tracing applications which deploy the same or different protocol. It is of utmost importance to improve public awareness on the potential hidden risks of the respective protocols and applications and instill user confidence. The purpose of this research is to study the security and privacy of the existing contact tracing protocols to ensure that the security and privacy of users can be guaranteed. The protocols used by the applications include DP-3T protocol, TCN protocol, PEPP-PT protocol and BlueTrace protocol. The architecture of the protocols can be classified into centralised and decentralised architectures. In addition, the contact tracing applications in seven selected countries will be briefly analysed and compared. Some common user concerns are also outlined.