Manish Tewari unlikely to contest Lok Sabha polls

Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 30: Kerala reported 32

fresh cases of coronavirus on Monday, with the worst affected Kasaragod district alone accounting for 17 cases.

Kannur reported 15 cases, while Wayanad and Idukki reported two each, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters here after a COVID-19 review meeting.

Of the 32 cases, 17 had come from abroad and 15 had been infected through contact.

A total of 213 people are presently under treatment in Kerala.

At least 1.50 lakh people are under surveillance in the state and 623 are in isolation wards of various hospitals.

New Delhi, May 6: The government on Wednesday said no data or security breach has been identified in Aarogya Setu after an ethical hacker raised concerns about a potential security issue in the app.

The app is the government's mobile application for contact tracing and disseminating medical advisories to users in order to contain the spread of coronavirus.

On Tuesday, a French hacker and cyber security expert Elliot Alderson had claimed that "a security issue has been found" in the app and that "privacy of 90 million Indians is at stake".

Dismissing the claims, the government said "no personal information of any user has been proven to be at risk by this ethical hacker".

"We are continuously testing and upgrading our systems. Team Aarogya Setu assures everyone that no data or security breach has been identified," the government said through the app’s Twitter handle.

The tweet gave point-by-point clarification on the red flags raised by the hacker.

"We discussed with the hacker and were made aware of the following... the app fetches user location on a few occasions," it said, but added that this was by design and is clearly detailed in the privacy policy.

The app fetches users’ location and stores on the server in a secure, encrypted, anonymised manner - at the time of registration, at the time of self assessment, when users submit their contact tracing data voluntary through the app or when it fetches the contact tracing data of users after they have turned COVID-19 positive, it said.

On another issue that users can get COVID-19 stats displayed on the home screen by changing the radius and latitude-longitude using a script, Aarogya Setu said that all this information is already public for all locations and hence does not compromise on any personal or sensitive data.

"We thank the ethical hacker on engaging with us. We encourage any users who identify a vulnerability to inform us immediately...," it said.

Responding to Aarogya Setu's clarification, Alderson tweeted, "I will come back to you tomorrow".

Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 8: Five more people from

Kerala have tested positive for coronavirus, Health minister, K K Shailaja said on Sunday.

All the five hail from Pathnamthitta district.

While three of them had returned from Italy on February 29, two others were their relatives, the minister said.

All the five have been isolated in Pathnamathitta general hospital and are under observation.

Their tests were confirmed on Saturday night.

Earlier, India's first three positive cases had been reported from the state.

All the three patients, medical students from Wuhan, have been treated and discharged from hospitals.