College contact-tracing app readily leaked personal data, report finds:
In an attempt to mitigate the potential spread of COVID-19, one Michigan college is requiring all students to install an app that will track their live locations at all times. Unfortunately, researchers have already found two major vulnerabilities in the app that can expose students' personal and health data.
Albion College informed students two weeks before the start of the fall term that they would be required to install and run the contact tracing app, called Aura.
[...] Aura, however, goes all in on real-time location-tracking instead, as TechCrunch reports. The app collects students' names, location, and COVID-19 status, then generates a QR code containing that information.
[...] TechCrunch used a network analysis tool to discover that the code was not generated on a device but rather on a hidden Aura website—and that TechCrunch could then easily change the account number in the URL to generate new QR codes for other accounts and receive access to other individuals' personal data.
A student at Albion, looking into the app's source code, also found hard-coded security keys for the app's backend servers. A researcher took a look and verified that those keys gave access to "patient data, including COVID-19 test results with names, addresses, and dates of birth," TechCrunch reports.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday August 22 2020, @04:51PM
It is interesting that this app is required - the assumption seems to be that 100% of the student body has a smartphone. I would guess the rate is already pretty high among college students, but do they now require a smartphone, presumably iOS or Android only, to be admitted to college? If so, what else do they impose upon the students via their phones? Maybe it's just considered essential today instead of a luxury, but as a once poor college student I'd be very tempted to drop the expense of having a smartphone.
Seeing things like this makes me glad I graduated college back when I did in the mid-2000's, right before everything went electronic.