Testing privacy risks in contact tracing apps with ‘COVIDGuardian’ February 26, 2021 Researchers develop first automated security and privacy assessment tool Researchers have designed a tool that can identify security and privacy risks associated with Covid-19 contact tracing apps. The tool, called COVIDGuardian, is the first automated security and privacy assessment tool to test contact tracing apps for potential threats. These threats include malware, embedded trackers, and private information leakage, the researchers mentioned. Cyber security experts used the tool to assess 40 Covid-19 contact tracing apps that have been employed worldwide for potential privacy and security threats. Their findings revealed that 72.5 per cent of the apps use at least one insecure cryptographic algorithm. Three-quarters of apps contained at least one tracker that reports information to third parties such as Facebook Analytics or Google Firebase.