PIVOT: Private and Effective Contact Tracing

Abstract

We propose, design, and evaluate PIVOT, a privacy-enhancing and effective contact tracing solution that aims to strike a balance between utility and privacy: one that does not collect sensitive information yet allowing effective tracing and notifying the close contacts of diagnosed users. PIVOT requires a considerably low degree of trust in the entities involved compared to centralized alternatives while retaining the necessary utility. To protect users’ privacy, it uses local proximity tracing based on broadcasting and recording constantly changing anonymous public keys via short-range communication. These public keys are used to establish a shared secret key between two people in close contact. The three keys (i.e., the two public keys and the established shared key) are then used to generate two unique per-user-per-contact hashes: one for infection registration and one for exposure score query. These hashes are never revealed to the public. To improve utility, user exposure score computation is performed centrally, which provides health authorities with minimal, yet insightful and actionable data. Data minimization is achieved by the use of per-user-per-contact hashes and by enforcing role separation: the health authority act as a mixing node, while the matching between reported and queried hashes is outsourced to a third entity, an independent matching service (MS). This separation ensures that out-of-scope information, such as users’ social interactions, is hidden from the health authorities, whereas the MS does not learn users’ sensitive information. To sustain our claims, we conduct a practical evaluation that encompasses anonymity guarantees and energy requirements.