05-01-2021, 02:47 AM
Pro-Trump web forums are abuzz with directions to forge Covid vaccine cards
Some states put templates online, spurring pro-Trump and anti-vaccination forums to start spreading tips for how to create fake cards.
Specific directions showing how to forge Covid-19 vaccination cards have proliferated on conspiracy, pro-Trump and anti-vaccination forums throughout the internet in recent weeks, as users have exploited a largely makeshift verification system.
The cards, distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have been handed out to the more than 140 million Americans who have already received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccination. The Biden administration has declared it wouldn't create a federal vaccination database, citing privacy concerns, paving the way for the cards to become the country’s default national way to verify if someone has been vaccinated.
And while one state — New York — has embraced a vaccination verification app, there is scant evidence that others are close behind.
While much of the country is in the early stages of deciding how to ask employees, students and travelers to prove they've been vaccinated, most of those entities that have already established a plan rely on those cards. The Silicon Valley company Salesforce announced earlier this month that employees returning to work in person will need to show their cards, and United Airlines said it will require the same of its employees.
Seven universities that already have plans in place to ask students to be vaccinated before attending this fall — American University, Bowdoin College, the University of Colorado Boulder, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Fort Lewis College, Rutgers University and Wesleyan University — all said the verification process would consist of asking students to upload their CDC cards, at least if they're coming from out of state.
But since the cards are marked by hand, don't contain much information, are printed on easily obtainable heavy white paper and are impossible to quickly verify, it leaves an opportunity for the anti-vaccine community to beat the system by sharing directions on how to forge them.
"It's a cardboard paper card," said Alyssa Miller, a cybersecurity expert who specializes in protecting large organizations. "There's absolutely nothing about it that would prevent you from reproducing it."
"How are you going to make someone at the opposite end, the ones who are supposed to be verifying these, to look at one and determine if it's legitimate or if it's fake?" she said.
In March, the FBI released a public warning that creating or buying a fake vaccine card is illegal.
On conspiracy and anti-government forums throughout the web, users have linked to card templates that were left visible on the websites of state governments, including high-resolution PDFs from the websites of both the Wyoming and Missouri health departments.
The CDC has since delivered guidance to states to pull the templates from their sites, citing “misuse” by the anti-vaccine community, according to state officials.
"CDC has consistently advised states not to post the vaccine card template publicly," CDC spokesperson Kate Grusich said in a statement.
The instructions for how to create forged cards have appeared in high-ranking comments and posts on pro-Trump forums, like TheDonald.win, which was rebranded to Patriots.Win after its userbase urged one another to storm the Capitol in the days before the Jan. 6 riot.
On the extremist forum 4chan, users were told to download a template from Wyoming’s Department of Health website, then given specific directions for the thickness of cardstock needed to replicate the cards. The directions note that some vaccination centers affix stick-on labels on cards to denote the date, so the recommended resolution for the printed labels is also provided.
Versions of the instructions, which have also been posted to gun forums and QAnon forums, remind users to write the date in a blue ballpoint pen, and not to be too neat with their handwriting, emulating a rushed or tired nurse. Some instructions provide potential batch numbers of the Pfizer or Moderna shots that align with dates they were distributed.
The posts usually link to templates that were publicly available and posted on the back end of the websites of several states.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/c...on-rcna802
Comment: how can people be so stupid?
Some states put templates online, spurring pro-Trump and anti-vaccination forums to start spreading tips for how to create fake cards.
Specific directions showing how to forge Covid-19 vaccination cards have proliferated on conspiracy, pro-Trump and anti-vaccination forums throughout the internet in recent weeks, as users have exploited a largely makeshift verification system.
The cards, distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have been handed out to the more than 140 million Americans who have already received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccination. The Biden administration has declared it wouldn't create a federal vaccination database, citing privacy concerns, paving the way for the cards to become the country’s default national way to verify if someone has been vaccinated.
And while one state — New York — has embraced a vaccination verification app, there is scant evidence that others are close behind.
While much of the country is in the early stages of deciding how to ask employees, students and travelers to prove they've been vaccinated, most of those entities that have already established a plan rely on those cards. The Silicon Valley company Salesforce announced earlier this month that employees returning to work in person will need to show their cards, and United Airlines said it will require the same of its employees.
Seven universities that already have plans in place to ask students to be vaccinated before attending this fall — American University, Bowdoin College, the University of Colorado Boulder, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Fort Lewis College, Rutgers University and Wesleyan University — all said the verification process would consist of asking students to upload their CDC cards, at least if they're coming from out of state.
But since the cards are marked by hand, don't contain much information, are printed on easily obtainable heavy white paper and are impossible to quickly verify, it leaves an opportunity for the anti-vaccine community to beat the system by sharing directions on how to forge them.
"It's a cardboard paper card," said Alyssa Miller, a cybersecurity expert who specializes in protecting large organizations. "There's absolutely nothing about it that would prevent you from reproducing it."
"How are you going to make someone at the opposite end, the ones who are supposed to be verifying these, to look at one and determine if it's legitimate or if it's fake?" she said.
In March, the FBI released a public warning that creating or buying a fake vaccine card is illegal.
On conspiracy and anti-government forums throughout the web, users have linked to card templates that were left visible on the websites of state governments, including high-resolution PDFs from the websites of both the Wyoming and Missouri health departments.
The CDC has since delivered guidance to states to pull the templates from their sites, citing “misuse” by the anti-vaccine community, according to state officials.
"CDC has consistently advised states not to post the vaccine card template publicly," CDC spokesperson Kate Grusich said in a statement.
The instructions for how to create forged cards have appeared in high-ranking comments and posts on pro-Trump forums, like TheDonald.win, which was rebranded to Patriots.Win after its userbase urged one another to storm the Capitol in the days before the Jan. 6 riot.
On the extremist forum 4chan, users were told to download a template from Wyoming’s Department of Health website, then given specific directions for the thickness of cardstock needed to replicate the cards. The directions note that some vaccination centers affix stick-on labels on cards to denote the date, so the recommended resolution for the printed labels is also provided.
Versions of the instructions, which have also been posted to gun forums and QAnon forums, remind users to write the date in a blue ballpoint pen, and not to be too neat with their handwriting, emulating a rushed or tired nurse. Some instructions provide potential batch numbers of the Pfizer or Moderna shots that align with dates they were distributed.
The posts usually link to templates that were publicly available and posted on the back end of the websites of several states.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/c...on-rcna802
Comment: how can people be so stupid?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.