Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash

Nothing Is Ever Perfect in Contract Tracing, But Here’s The Weaknesses in NHSX App

Nothing’s perfect, especially when it comes to Contract Tracing! If you are interested, I have created a demo of the basic methods used here:

NHSX Contract Tracing Method

While there are some things to like about the NHSX App, we need to understand the core risks, and make sure we mitigate against them. So, from what I can tell, the possible risks in NHSX app are:

• Only contacts that you have make after the install of App will be traced (if you are infected, you’re likely to be indoors anyway).
• The data is stored on the public cloud, and is not stored in the NHS infrastruture.
• A breach of the private key on the server releases all of the contacts.
• Bob can be traced for a day using his daily public key. This is generated every day, and is broadcast every time that Bob comes into contact with someone. By relaying the broadcast, to another place, Bob can be tracked with his daily public key. In the Google/Apple method, a new tracing ID is generated every 10 minutes, and which…