BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:IEEE vTools.Events//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:MST BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:19671029T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0600 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:MST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20210827T043446Z UID:62250D8B-1B29-4557-BF5E-5494C3687872 DTSTART;TZID=MST:20210826T160000 DTEND;TZID=MST:20210826T170000 DESCRIPTION:Proximity tracing apps have been proposed as an aid in dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. Some of those apps leverage attenuation of Bluet ooth beacons from mobile devices to build a record of proximate encounters between a pair of device owners. The underlying protocols are known to su ffer from false positive and re-identification attacks.\n\nDr. Joel Reardo n\, Assistant professor at the University of Calgary\, presents evidence t hat the attacker's difficulty in mounting such attacks has been overestima ted. Indeed\, an attacker leveraging a moderately successful app or SDK wi th Bluetooth and location access can eavesdrop and interfere with these pr oximity tracing systems at no hardware cost and perform these attacks agai nst users who do not have this app or SDK installed. We describe concrete examples of actors who would be in a good position to execute such attacks .\n\nHe further presents a novel attack\, namely a biosurveillance attack\ , which allows the attacker to monitor the exposure risk of a smartphone u ser who installs their app or SDK but who does not use any contact tracing system and may falsely believe they have opted out of the system.\n\nThro ugh traffic auditing with an instrumented testbed\, he characterizes preci sely the behaviour of one such SDK that he found in a handful of apps but installed on more than one hundred million mobile devices. Its behaviour i s functionally indistinguishable from a re-identification or biosurveillan ce attack and capable of executing a false positive attack with minimal ef fort. He also discusses how easily an attacker could acquire a position co nducive to such attacks by leveraging the lax logic for granting permissio ns to apps n the Android framework: any app with some geolocation permissi on could acquire the necessary Bluetooth permission through an upgrade\, w ithout any additional user prompt.\n\nSpeaker(s): Joel Reardon\, \n\nVirtu al: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/278520 LOCATION:Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/278520 ORGANIZER:alireza.imani@ucaglary.ca SEQUENCE:15 SUMMARY:Proximity Tracing in an Ecosystem of Surveillance Capitalism URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/278520 X-ALT-DESC:Description: <br /><p>Proximity tracing apps have been proposed as an aid in dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. Some of those apps leverage attenuation of Bluetooth beacons from mobile devices to build a record of proximate encounters between a pair of device owners. The underlying prot ocols are known to suffer from false positive and re-identification attack s.</p>\n<p><strong>Dr. Joel Reardon</strong>\, Assistant professor at the University of Calgary\, presents evidence that the attacker's difficulty i n mounting such attacks has been overestimated. Indeed\, an attacker lever aging a moderately successful app or SDK with Bluetooth and location acces s can eavesdrop and interfere with these proximity tracing systems at no h ardware cost and perform these attacks against users who do not have this app or SDK installed. We describe concrete examples of actors who would be in a good position to execute such attacks.</p>\n<div>\n<p>He further pre sents a novel attack\, namely a biosurveillance attack\, which allows the attacker to monitor the exposure risk of a smartphone user who installs th eir app or SDK but who does not use any contact tracing system and may fal sely believe they have opted out of the system.&nbsp\;</p>\n<p>Through tra ffic auditing with an instrumented testbed\, he characterizes precisely th e behaviour of one such SDK that he found in a handful of apps but install ed on more than one hundred million mobile devices. Its behaviour is funct ionally indistinguishable from a re-identification or biosurveillance atta ck and capable of executing a false positive attack with minimal effort. H e also discusses how easily an attacker could acquire a position conducive to such attacks by leveraging the lax logic for granting permissions to a pps n the Android framework: any app with some geolocation permission coul d acquire the necessary Bluetooth permission through an upgrade\, without any additional user prompt.</p>\n</div> END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR