Continued from page 3 ‘Fit To Fly’ Secure Health Passport for air travel
secure, multipurpose, cross corporate and cross-government digital health passport that does not rely on using bar codes or QR codes as its authenti- cation technology. Both bar codes and QR codes have huge potential security implications as they can be cloned and hacked with the latter being subject to a process called ‘Attagging’. There- fore, any suggestion of using this type of technology in a health passport for air travel has very real security risks. Not only is a citizen’s personal infor- mation at risk, but their Covid test sta- tus, vaccination records and also their credit card information.
All of this
can lead to the very real potential of a massive data breach and a person’s personal information and data hacked and stolen. This is of particular con- cern when using a bar code or QR code technology designed for use to authen- ticate a person’s Covid 19 testing and/ or vaccinations records.” With the alarming increase and black-market trade in fake Covid 19 test certificates this also puts a very real threat and risk to passenger safe- ty on airline carriers with the potential to infect and contaminate other pas- sengers on what would be a Covid safe bubble onboard an aircraft. It is well documented that bar codes and QR codes can be hacked so any airline that considers using a health passport for Covid 19 testing and vac- cination using this method of authenti- cation risks a serious potential breach of its passenger data. In 2018 British Airways was fined a record £20M for a data breach affecting its custom- ers which affected their personal and credit card data.
Louis-James Davis went on to state that both bar codes and QR codes - which represent first- and second-gen- eration technology - are unsecure and vulnerable to hacking. “QR codes were originally developed as a scan- ning technology for close proximity car parts tracking, a world away from iden- tity and banking use cases and now digital health passports. It was then used to skip the input of websites in marketing and promotional purposes. They were never designed with securi-
ty or privacy in mind… they are simply not fit for purpose and should not be used at all in any form for delivery of sensitive information, travel or event tickets or health passport.” QR codes can be subject to a process called ‘Attagging’ or ‘cloning.’ The process of ‘Attagging’ is where a ‘gen- uine QR code’ is replaced by a ‘cloned QR code’ which then redirects the person scanning that code to a similar website where personal data can be in- tercepted and breached. The problem is that serious that in India alone there are over 1 billion fraudulent financial transactions each day using QR codes. As the scanning user journey is the same, it is only tech savvy individuals that may notice the domain name has changed.”
As reported by a recent Forbes Maga- zine investigation, it is predicted that over 11 Million households in the US alone will scan a QR code this year and the majority of them, some 71% of people who have interacted with a QR code will not know if it is the start of a malicious hack. It is envisaged that over 5.3 Billion QR codes will be redeemed this year making it one of the fastest growing tech scanning in- teractions and also posing one of the greatest cyber threats.
QR codes can be cloned and redirect- ed to other information points or web- sites. Often criminals and hackers will exploit this by putting a fake QR code over a genuine QR code. So a QR code for example on scanning would link to the genuine website
www.similardo-
main.com but a fake QR code can be made up printed off and placed over the genuine code to redirect to www.
similar-domain.com at this point the member of the public is tricked into entering their personal information, private data and financial information. The rogue website looks and feels ex- actly like the genuine one and is made to mirror it precisely.
“VCode which is the ultra-secure dig- ital code which powers the V-Health Passport cannot be cloned. Even if it was printed off, or a photograph was taken and placed over a VCode or V-Health Passport it simply won’t scan
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as it works on a call and response sys- tem of information between the code and web platform to verify location of the code, user ID and time and date and much more.”
Louis-James Davis added: “We devel- oped and built the V-Health Passport and health wallet to be the most se- cure technology on the planet that you could use as a health passport where you could combine your test status, vaccination record, boarding pass, air- line ticket, music or sports ticket all in one app. With V-Health Passport we wanted to provide functionality and greater mobility to allow citizens to re- turn to work, be fit to fly or return to the sports stadiums. But at the heart of the technology was the ability to protect and respect data privacy of the individual.”
“The lack of engagement and inter- action by the public with Government track and trace apps over the pandem- ic was over privacy, security of data and the tracking of a person’s live location. This is why we have built a unique sys- tem in the vein of ‘Self Sovereign ID’ with the ethics of privacy & security by design. The V-Health Passport puts the citizen in control in a way which they share information with who, when and where.” V-Health Passport will help employers safely return their employees back to their offices, factories and warehous- es. It will facilitate airlines to allow their passengers to be fit to fly and avoid the need for quarantine restric- tions. At the same time, it will ensure their airline ticket or boarding pass is secure and won’t be hacked. A citizen will be able to share their health pass and confirm their Covid test status, or present their vaccina- tion record. They will also be able to show their credit score, work permit or visa, scan their travel or event pass. At the heart of each interaction they will have peace of mind that their data and information is highly secure and ultimately, they control who sees what, who scans what, where and when.
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