Tracing the Tracer: Analysis of a Mobile Contact Tracing Application

The pandemic has led to the rapid development of applications designed to take advantage of our hyper-connected world. The Ehteraz application was developed, deployed, and mandated in the nation of Qatar. Government regulation required citizens to register with the app to enter businesses such as malls and grocery stores which forced rapid adoption among the populace. Many citizens are concerned about the range of permissions the app requires to function. Unpacking the application and finding a method of dissecting network traffic was complicated by measures developers took to prevent miscreant-in-the-middle attacks and analysis. Sharing the journey of decrypting the traffic in this application may prove useful to future engineers reversing and bypassing protections to perform analysis on mobile app traffic. Initial analysis has confirmed the application sends only location and Bluetooth data to centralized servers owned by the Ministry of Interior of the State of Qatar.