A Secure Privacy-Preserving Quarantine Notification System [Funder: Carleton University COVID-19 Rapid Research Response Grants]

Due to a large number of asymptomatic carriers, the COVID-19 contagion is complex to monitor. Consequently, confirmed patients, as well as potentially infected individuals, are required to quarantine in order to control the spread of the virus. When a person is confirmed infected, a Contact Tracing System (CTS) is used by health authorities to determine this person's whereabouts and obtain a list of individuals with "close" encounters so these individuals can be advised to self-quarantine. Several countries - such as China, South Korea, and Singapore - have developed and already use CTSs. However, these CTSs do not preserve the privacy of their users. That is, health authorities keep track of everyone's whereabouts and can identify confirmed cases and their "close" contacts. Such an approach is not acceptable in Europe and North America. Consequently, several CTS proposals have been put forth to improve privacy. Proprietary closed-source solutions (e.g., from Apple/Google) are not acceptable in light of recent breach-of-privacy scandals. Some have inherent security vulnerabilities. Others (e.g., from UK's NHSX and from the MILA lab in Montreal) require human intervention. # We have developed a Privacy-Preserving Quarantine Notification System. Through the use of Bluetooth and WiFi-enabled mobile devices, a user can receive a notification to quarantine if this user has encountered a confirmed COVID-19 patient 14 days before or after the lab confirmation date of this patient. A future version will also support IoT sensors. Our system is the only one we know that fulfills the following requirements: 1) secure (i.e., resilient to cyber attacks) 2) fully automated (i.e., not reliant on human intervention, except for its easy installation) 3) privacy preserving (i.e., prevents unlawful identification of an individual) 4) efficient (i.e., quarantine notifications must be timely) The guarantees of our system with respect to security and privacy favour its widespread adoption by Canadians, which, in turn, will ensure we stop the spread of the virus and successfully restart our economy.