Covid-19 vaccination certificates are being sold illegally on the Darkweb. That’s the conclusion of a group of cybersecurity experts who have investigated the way vendors offer forged vaccine certificates online.
The researchers have even verified the forged certificates using national covid vaccine apps. This raises the possibility that forgers have gained access to the private keys that health care systems use to guarantee the authenticity of vaccine certificates in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
First some background. Digital vaccine certificates should be hard to forge, at least in theory. For example, countries within the European Union issue certificates guaranteed by a digital certification process.
This works by encrypting information using a private key that only the health authority has access to. This information is then encoded in a QR code that can be scanned by national covid applications. In this process, the information is decrypted using a public key ...
