I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world” • Hacker News Board

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#131

Post by refurb » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:07 AM UTC

roca wrote: post #114

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and this is why I have a problem with employer enforced mandates even though I'm vaccinated. The government taking away your right to work and support yourself based on some pretty flimsy data about the public good for something that should be a personal decision. Fact is, the vaccinated really shouldn't be losing much sleep over the unvaccinated other than maybe those dirty people might be taking up an ICU be…

Comparing failure to vaccinate with smoking or obesity are off the mark because it is not easy to quit smoking or overcome obesity. If there was an effective, cheap, safe and instant cure for smoking addiction or obesity and people refused to take it, societies would indeed by highly critical of those people consuming hospital resources.

Why does it have to be easy?

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#132

Post by dragonsky » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

sgtnoodle wrote: post #125

galaxyLogic wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the following graph deaths per 100,000 people are: 18 for unvaccinated 3 for vaccinated. at the peak of the graph between July and October 2021. Doesn't that tell us that vaccinations help to significantly reduce Covid-deaths? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-co...

Thanks for the link. For fun I downloaded the referenced CDC dataset. One thing I noticed is that the fraction of deaths per case for the vaccinated population was higher than for the unvaccinated population until July, at which point it "snapped" to match for the rest of the dataset. It seems like a curious anomaly. https://imgur.com/a/QGJqs0S

Where older and more venerable people being vaccinated early? They still are more likely to die if infected. Then a spread of vaccination to the general population. You would have to look at a breakdown of who was vaccinated at the time you saw the lower vaccine benefit.

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#133

Post by coolso » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:16 AM UTC

roca wrote: post #114

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and this is why I have a problem with employer enforced mandates even though I'm vaccinated. The government taking away your right to work and support yourself based on some pretty flimsy data about the public good for something that should be a personal decision. Fact is, the vaccinated really shouldn't be losing much sleep over the unvaccinated other than maybe those dirty people might be taking up an ICU be…

Comparing failure to vaccinate with smoking or obesity are off the mark because it is not easy to quit smoking or overcome obesity. If there was an effective, cheap, safe and instant cure for smoking addiction or obesity and people refused to take it, societies would indeed by highly critical of those people consuming hospital resources.

> because it is not easy to quit smoking or overcome obesity

Eat... less?

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#134

Post by 2fast4you » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:16 AM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #63

pier25 wrote: post #28

Here in Mexico the gov issued vaccination certificates always have errors. People have resorted to downloading the PDF and "hacking it" (editing it in Acrobat). Nobody ever actually checks whether the certificate is valid or not.

I think most people who are smart enough to fake the certificate are smart enough to get vaccinated. What do you win by using a fake certificate vs. getting protected by the vaccine?

Unfortunately, you’d be surprised. I know of at least one

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#135

Post by bluefox » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

roca wrote: post #124

sushsjsuauahab wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not easy for me to vaccinate myself when I've had adverse reactions in the past.

Sorry to hear that, but that's a small minority of people. And I hope you've talked to your doctor about it --- we're lucky with COVID to have a variety of vaccines with different makeups to choose from.

You told sushsjsuauahab that he/she is a small minority of people. I'm sure that makes sushsjsuauahab and others who have their own (gasp) reasons not to get the vaccine feel better... See, it's this one-size-fits-all dictum backed by sanctions that's the problem. The vaccines help prevent sickness, but government policies hurt healthy people.

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#136

Post by kingcharles » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #63

pier25 wrote: post #28

Here in Mexico the gov issued vaccination certificates always have errors. People have resorted to downloading the PDF and "hacking it" (editing it in Acrobat). Nobody ever actually checks whether the certificate is valid or not.

I think most people who are smart enough to fake the certificate are smart enough to get vaccinated. What do you win by using a fake certificate vs. getting protected by the vaccine?

I don't think parent was promoting the use of fake certificates to bypass the need to get vaccinated. They were pointing out that even for vaccinated persons the certificate system was broken, and those folks were resorting to "fake" certificates just to get around.

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#137

Post by roca » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

bluefox wrote: post #135

roca wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear that, but that's a small minority of people. And I hope you've talked to your doctor about it --- we're lucky with COVID to have a variety of vaccines with different makeups to choose from.

You told sushsjsuauahab that he/she is a small minority of people. I'm sure that makes sushsjsuauahab and others who have their own (gasp) reasons not to get the vaccine feel better... See, it's this one-size-fits-all dictum backed by sanctions that's the problem. The vaccines help prevent sickness, but government policies hurt healthy people.

Dunno about other countries but in NZ you can apply for medical exemption from vaccine mandates. A panel of medical professionals evaluates your situation and if they agree, you get a vaccine pass that works the same as for a vaccinated person.

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#138

Post by roca » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

coolso wrote: post #133

roca wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing failure to vaccinate with smoking or obesity are off the mark because it is not easy to quit smoking or overcome obesity. If there was an effective, cheap, safe and instant cure for smoking addiction or obesity and people refused to take it, societies would indeed by highly critical of those people consuming hospital resources.

> because it is not easy to quit smoking or overcome obesity Eat... less?

I lean heavily into personal responsibility, but even I don't tell people struggling with addiction "have you tried NOT taking it?"

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#139

Post by bluefox » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

roca wrote: post #137

bluefox wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You told sushsjsuauahab that he/she is a small minority of people. I'm sure that makes sushsjsuauahab and others who have their own (gasp) reasons not to get the vaccine feel better... See, it's this one-size-fits-all dictum backed by sanctions that's the problem. The vaccines help prevent sickness, but government policies hurt healthy people.

Dunno about other countries but in NZ you can apply for medical exemption from vaccine mandates. A panel of medical professionals evaluates your situation and if they agree, you get a vaccine pass that works the same as for a vaccinated person.

Sounds like a new Soviet Union.

Re: I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”

#140

Post by NovemberWhiskey » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:56 AM UTC

akomtu wrote: post #46

slownews45 wrote: post #3

Short version if they get taken down: The validation apps used a 512 bit RSA public key. They used a factoring app and spend $200 on amazon to factor the private key from the public key. They were then able to generate the COVID passes. This is for the Honai Police Dept.

Why would anyone use RSA when we have X25519?

It is fairly baffling why you'd choose RSA with 512 bit keys; as noted elsewhere I assume this is about the size of the signature. However, a PKCS#1 signature for a 512 bit RSA key is 64 bytes, which is the same size as an ECDSA signature for, say, a NIST P-256 key and you're giving up an enormous amount of security by choosing RSA even vs entirely mainstream stuff like ECDSA.