24 Mar 2020
Researchers at Germany's Robert Koch Institute and Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute are working on an app that uses Bluetooth connections between smartphones and is compliant with GDPR to anonymously save the distance and duration of contact between people on the smartphone to make it possible to
26 Mar 2020
Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Informatics/KOMINFO official website) On Thursday, 26 March 2020, the Indonesian Minister of Communication and Informatics, Johnny G. Plate, issued the Ministerial Decree No. 159/2000 to facilitate the cooperation between the Government and telecommunication
24 Mar 2020
The Israeli Ministry of Health's mobile app, "The Shield", is intended to alert users if they have been at a location in Israel at the same time as a known COVID-19 patient. The app, which is available for both Android and iOS, works by collecting the GPS and WiFi network (SSID) information of a
24 Mar 2020
In a partnership with G3 Global Berhad, a system combining thermal scanning technology and facial recognition from SenseTime has been put in place at Malaysia's King's Palace. The combination is intended to trigger alerts, as well as detect and identify people even when they're wearing face masks in
24 Mar 2020
In Jojutla, a municipality in the southern state of Morelos, the government is using drones, normally used for security tasks such as reducing homicides, to surveille gatherings in public parks and plazas and tell people to go home, at the same time distributing hand sanitiser gel and face masks on
25 Mar 2020
A web form to screen COVID-19 cases developed by the Mexico City government collects a wide range of personal information such as name, age, telephone number, home address, social network username, and cellphone number. The privacy notice establishes that such data may be transferred to a vast array
23 Mar 2020
Owing to concerns about the possibility of spreading the coronavirus via banknotes and payment cards, Russia has begun testing its Unified Biometric System (EBS) for payments at a selection of grocery stores including Lenta supermarkets. The Russian bank VTB plans a mass roll-out for mid-2020. For
24 Mar 2020
Managed from a purpose-built coronavirus control centre, Moscow's network of 100,000 cameras equipped with facial recognition technology is being used to ensure that anyone placed under quarantine stays off the streets. Officials claim the centre can also be used to track international arrivals and
24 Mar 2020
The success of South Korea's efforts to combat the coronavirus without a national lockdown and without suspending civil rights depended in part on preparation put in place after the 2015 MERS epidemic and in part on the country's network of private testing labs, which enabled the country to quickly
25 Mar 2020
A newly-enacted Slovakian law, inspired by similar laws in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, allows the country's Public Health Office to use location data from mobile phones to track people ordered to quarantine to ensure they are not breaking the rules. The angry public response on privacy
24 Mar 2020
Estonia's Government Crisis Commission has instructed the state statistical office, Statistics Estonia, to use mobile geolocation data from companies such as Telia, Elisa, and Tele 2 in order to study people's movements to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Statistics Estonia hoped to launch the
24 Mar 2020
A day after John Tory, the mayor of the City of Toronto, told thousands of attendees at an online event hosted by TechTO that the city was gathering cellphone location data from telecoms in order to identify areas where residents were still congregating despite the city's social distancing rules, he
23 Mar 2020
The Rio de Janeiro City Hall has signed an agreement with telecomunications company TIM to use geolocation data to develop "heat maps" by cross-referencing epidemological hubs with high population density locations. Under the agreement, TIM will pinpoint the movement of its users across Rio de
23 Jul 2018
Bluetooth firmware or operating system software drivers may not sufficiently validate elliptic curve parameters used to generate public keys during a Diffie-Hellman key exchange, which may allow a remote attacker to obtain the encryption key used by the device.
Bluetooth utilizes a device pairing mechanism based on elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key exchange to allow encrypted communication between devices. The ECDH key pair consists of a private and a public key, and the public keys are exchanged to produce a shared pairing key. The devices must
13 Sep 2017
Questions are being raised again about the security of Bluetooth after researchers uncovered another flaw that could potentially compromise billions of devices.
Armis published details of the Bluetooth vulnerability it is calling ‘Blueborne’. The attack disguises itself as a Bluetooth device and exploits a weaknesses in the protocol to deploy malicious code.
“The BlueBorne attack vector requires no user interaction, is compatible to all software versions, and does not require any preconditions or configurations aside of the Bluetooth being active,” warned the researchers. “Unlike the common misconception, Bluetooth enabled devices are constantly
18 Nov 2019
An engineering and computer science professor and his team from The Ohio State University discovered a design flaw in low-powered Bluetooth devices that leaves them susceptible to hacking.
An engineering and computer science professor and his team from The Ohio State University discovered a design flaw in low-powered Bluetooth devices that leaves them susceptible to hacking. Zhiqiang Lin, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the university, found the commonly
