EU Green Pass-generation keys stolen | Hacker News Reader

EU Green Pass-generation keys stolen

ansa.it

55 pointsBerazu83 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29011537

I am part of the team working on the EU-DCC, and am very active in the community (we're a proper open source project).

I cannot comment on this myself, but it looks like my health ministry has:

https://nos.nl/liveblog/2403253-ook-in-duitsland-stijgt-aant...

Technical issues aside, the EU Green pass is a gigantic success. Super easy travel across Europe and all other participating countries.

So... from just driving across the border, it's got "super easy", by having to stop at every border crossing, "papers please", and "medical papers please"? I've traveled through the balkan in the 90s, and it was easier then, than now. And even during the war times, the travel was more consistent, and I didn't have to check the border crossing rules every day, because they didn't change that often.

The balkans also didn't have a dangerous pandemic in the 90s. Ignoring this little fact is outrageously dishonest.

Oh yes, surely nothing more dangerous than a pandemic was happening in the balkans in the 90s, that would make border crossings problematic at the time.

Yeah, war is terrible but it ain't contagious.

It's not like there's not covid on the other side of the border too.

It's certainly not like you understand epidemiological dynamics, that's for sure.

This is not meant to be a "forever" state of things, hopefully we'll go back to basic Schengen rules when the emergency subsides. Sadly the virus is what it is, and compartimentalising systems as much as possible is necessary to fight it.

This is so naive... let be honest, it's just pure nationalism, the pride of each country thinking to be better than the neighbours.

Let's take some examples of some "flagship" western European countries, such as Germany or the UK. These 2 countries have constantly classified the risk level of other countries, forbidding/warning their citizen to not travel abroad in "risk areas", despite themselves having, at times, much higher infection rates than any other country they classified at risk. It was specifically the case in the first half of 2021.

A counter example, the US is as big as the whole of Europe and they didn't "compartimentize" their states like it happened in Europe. And they just did ok (compared to Europe)

One has to realize that Europe is a patchwork of countries which have always fought against each other since history remembers, and "Schengen rules" is a new thing which is not deeply changing the culture and instincts of these countries and their citizen.

Yes, just 14 days to flatten the curve.

If everyone had locked down hard in those fateful months of last year, like China did, we wouldn't be here. But we didn't, and so we are here.

There is evidence that the virus in China was leaked earlier than we think, so their lockdown was pretty tardive as well. There are also doubts on the number of deaths reported by China (according to CNN, which is pretty pro China).

People had antibodies in the states in December 19 according to the CDC. This also matches some anecdotal accounts from a girl on instagram that claimed her family had COVID in 2019 in the States after a visit from China.

We probably didn't notice because COVID mortality is pretty low.

Containing such an easily transmissible virus is also pretty much close impossible, no amount of lockdown would have killed it.

Australia did just that... and then someone caughed across the border, and they did it again.. and again.. and again. And australia is an island, compared to europe, where people literally live, work and shop in different countries.

Yes. And add Thailand to the list. full lockdown almost 2 years long, not a case, population goes into (even more) poverty as tourists are excluded. Then they open and... oops..

We still don't know the origin of virus and yet you believe that China handle it well. Look at Sweeden, or Denmark. No restrictions and it is perfectly fine. Idea of locking down people at home because of virus, that has mortality 0.04% for infected people, with average of 79 years, is non acceptable and insane and definitely not healthy.

It is a tragedy as it has legitimised total control. In Latvia you cannot enter the shop without showing the certificate and passport. The control is even worse than during Soviet times.

The Soviets didn't have pandemics, but look at the measures imposed by the Chinese for a hint.

It is a success for the European Union. Not for the Europeans! I'm vaccinated and prefer to be around vaccinated people. Because of health? Yes. But also because of the mindset of people. But why is it not a success for Europeans? We had super easy travel before Covid - no borders - free settlement, travel and work. You've just carry your ID with you.

Regarding the stolen keys? I'm afraid similar things will happen again and again. At least the apps in Germany feel to work okay, also autonomous and offline. But relying blindly more on digitization (technology) will make things prone to errors. How many days since a BIG IT company failed hard?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-somehow-got-their-root... (english)

Six! Okay. But it is only Microsoft? The others won't fail? Did you said Facebook? How many days since Facebook accidentally removed itself entirely from the internet? We don't need more digitization - we need a lot better computing and not more of it.

> I'm vaccinated and prefer to be around vaccinated people. Because of health? Yes. But also because of the mindset of people

- I'm well-trained and prefer to be around well-trained people

- I'm classically educated and prefer to be around classically educated people

- I'm an atheist and prefer to be around atheists

- I'm Christian and prefer to be around Christians

- I'm Hindu and prefer to be around Hindus

- I'm Muslim and prefer to be around Muslims

- I'm vegetarian and prefer to be around vegetarians

- I'm anarchist and prefer to be around anarchists

- I'm <category> and prefer to be around <category>

Notice the segregated society this attitude creates? Now look in some history books - real ones, not political propaganda pieces - and see how this type of us-versus-them society tends to end up.

I'm vaccinated and I don't give a damn about whether people around me are vaccinated or not. I'm atheist and like to mingle with Christians, Hindus, Muslims and what have you. I'm left-handed and still willing to shake your hand (remember that, shaking hands?). I'm open to the world, not just to my own in-group. I might not agree with many of the doctrines of those Muslims nor some of those Christians or Hindus, I might sometimes be annoyed at how utensils are tailored to right-handed people but I'm not going to segregate myself into an atheist, left-handed, classically educated, ... group just because of such trivial quibbles.

Also, SARS2 is not a big threat to vaccinated people. Why the hysteria? Did you act this way during one of the influenza pandemics? If not, then why treat this disease differently?

> Notice the segregated society this attitude creates? Now look in some history books - real ones, not political propaganda pieces - and see how this type of us-versus-them society tends to end up.

Is this supposed to be a real argument? I mean, should we go hug ebola patients because if not, bam facism!

Willing to mingle with people very different from yourself is a very new phenomenon and certainly not widespread. It's nice that you can look past the differences.

> SARS2 is not a big threat to vaccinated people. Why the hysteria?

Even if we assume that it's not a threat to the vaccinated, it is still very much a threat to the non-vaccinated. All sorts of pandemic measures are designed to help society as a whole, not just the individual obeying the rules.

> Even if we assume that it's not a threat to the vaccinated, it is still very much a threat to the non-vaccinated

...which is irrelevant in the context of this discussion which centres around a vaccinated person preferring to avoid unvaccinated people.

It is strange how the vaccinated seem to be the ones most scared of the disease while the unvaccinated just get on with their lives. Many of those unvaccinated people have had SARS2 and as such have better immunity than any vaccine can give them, even more are in the age brackets where SARS2 is no serious threat. Most will have a full set of childhood vaccinations but are wary of these new vaccines which do not have a long safety record like the aforementioned childhood vaccines. A small group will be opposed to any and all vaccines, even though many if not most of them will have gotten vaccinated as children. For some reason the latter group is used as a marker for all unvaccinated people but the same is - fortunately - not true for the vaccinated group or I would be considered like one scared of his own shadow, not being able to cope with any risk now matter how small. It should not be true for the unvaccinated either but alas, that ship has sailed.

It is not irrelevant. Once again, it's about more than individual gains, it's about group gains. A vaccinated person can still carry the virus even if they themselves are relatively fine. Not wanting to be in contact with higher risk people (the unvaccinated) helps prevent the spread of the virus.

> It is strange how the vaccinated seem to be the ones most scared of the disease while the unvaccinated just get on with their lives.

I don't see how that is strange at all. Clearly the vaccinated people are much more likely to consider the virus to be a serious threat as compared to the unvaccinated who tend to brush it off as either a minor annoyance or straight up fake propaganda.

This can be seen in all sorts of other areas. It's the climate scientists who are most scared of climate change, it's the cryptographers who are most scared of broken cryptography, it's the educated who are most scared of drinking from the same river the village pees in.

I swallowed a Mmmemberberry, and this came back to me :

"I was 20 years old, before the USofA Congress voted for the Patriot Act. I was about to travel a short 1h hop by plane, and I walked directly to the gate from the parking, right in front of the plane. I presented my password and ticket to the attendant, and boarded."

That's it. Nothing more to this memory.

That stopped with 9/11.

Precisely.

Didn't the US finish up in Afghanistan and Iraq ? Why don't we go back ?

"Super easy travel" is not how I would describe an application designed to ease the limiting of movement of people based on medical status.

Obviously it's super easy compared with the restrictions before.

Pre-green pass I basically carried a thick folder as I crossed multiple countries, each with different restrictions and translation requirements.

It doesn't limit travel - those decisions are still made by each country individually with some guidance from the EU. The EU does not have control over what COVID entry requirements a country sets, beyond making recommendations.

All the document and its regulation do is say, "if you impose entry requirements based on vaccination / testing / recovery, you must accept at least these types of vaccines / tests / recovery specifics and you must accept this document (if genuine) as proving what it says, and all of this on a non-discriminatory basis regardless of nationality or place of occurrence." The document itself is never made mandatory by the EU and alternative proofs for entry to a member state must be accepted.

(Why do I say "document" instead of app? From the user perspective, you can print it on paper, present it as a PDF, or use one of many interoperable national apps among other ways to present it.)

So, the restrictions you're unhappy about are imposed by countries in reaction to COVID; the document we're discussing just sets some minimum allowed level of ease in satisfying national entry requirements.

Sure. I've edited my comment to indicate that the application "eases" the limiting of movement of people within the EU. It serves no other purpose.

It doesn't ease the limiting of movement though - it actually restricts the ability of countries within the EU to limit movement, easing the movement itself. If the EU had taken no action to create the EU DCC and the associated regulation, countries would be freer to limit movement than they are now.

The parent comment was correct. The app, in and of itself, is just a tool. Your comment gives this away by including the clause "and the associated regulation".

That being said, it is a tool built for a single purpose. "Papers, please".

If we're lucky, the scope of use for this tool will not expand. I don't like having to get lucky.

It would be great, if the certificate was enough to show at the boarding gate to be able to travel. However, this is not the case – the countries still require to fill long poorly developed forms with a lot of private information. Some of these forms (Latvian forms) doesn't even check the certificate, only asks to check the box that you have one.

It could be worse without the certificate for sure. But I don't think that all this extra effort to set up the system, to deal with falsifications etc. was worth it. The EU could simply make a law requiring to accept the vaccination proof of any country and that would be it.

>limit the movement of people based on medical status

That's literally the idea behind fighting contagious diseases, widely used to defend islands and castles before the vaccines. People used to wait in ships for weeks before they can embark. We used to have castles insulated to keep an outbreak out of it's population. Through the history of humanity, countless people were lost to contagious diseases.

The Green Pass thingy is essentially an enabler to open up the castle and let sailors embark without waiting for weeks to see if if they will get sick or not. It's a management tool to relieve the hardships of contagious diseases fighting methods.

So let's not confuse the causality here.

When are the participating countries going to get rid of it? When is the pandemic over?

The virus didn't gave us an ETA of its demise. It will probably stay longer than ideal since not every country in the Europe has high vaccination rates as Portugal.

It's seriously puzzling to see he immense belief in the governments power. How on earth one can demand a specific day for removal of management tools against the natural processes?

It's not about the virus disappearing, it's about governments accepting that people die of diseases and COVID is just another one.

I spoke to the government, they concur. People in fact die from diseases that are not limited to Covid-19. What now?

You all stop attempting to engineer human society around slowing covid spread? We look at the problems confronting us holistically? I could go on but really this is it.

I hereby officially seize my attempts of engineering human society. What are we going to do to spread the virus? Would you suggest vaccine mandates so that we can go back to normal, removing restrictions to travel and human contact?

Dr Fauci and other public administrators and workers have told us multiple times since last year that herd immunity would be achieved if 60% to 70% of people were vaccinated. Since we know that antibodies from past infection are as good or better than two shots of Pfizer [0], and since we also know that most people in the USA have antibodies from one source or another by now [1]...we do in the United States have a basis with which to determine the "eta of its demise."

We just seem to lack some political will to be more expedient in declaring the pandemic endemic and herd immunity achieved. In any case, when I look at the same situation in Europe, there are plenty of countries that are in the same boat. Population antibody levels by now are higher than what was claimed as the threshold needed to avert disaster. We've all been doing that.

So it's insufficient to keep accepting "probably longer than idea." That is too vague and nebulous and allows too much to go wrong. Government has more power than you realize and its government imposing these "management tools" as a cudgel against free movement and liberty. The situation in Australia [2], for example, should alarm everyone - especially those on the side of granting the powers that be basically unlimited license to do whatever they want to solve this.

If the ship has sailed due to the antibodies, then what need is there for this vagueness?

[0] - https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

"The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. The newly released data show people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19."

[1] - miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article253987048.html

"More than 80% of Americans have coronavirus antibodies acquired through infection or vaccination, according to a new study of over 1.4 million blood donations across the U.S."

[2] - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...

Please read this in its entirety and actually ponder it deeply.

You understand that we are not entering into a contract with your public officials in exchange of ending the pandemic, right?

It's absurd to claim that some public officials failed on their contractual obligations by not ending the pandemic despite the public delivering on their antibody obligations. It doesn't work like that.

What happens is, people start getting sick and die. Public officials in charge of stopping this prepare an action plan based on the information available to them. They need to balance their plan according to the resources available and scientific advice available. Unfortunately, the resources are finite and the scientific advice can be patchy and change over time as the scientists study the new microbe.

That's why you have public officials saying that the pandemic will end at %60 but it turns out you need even more immunity. They say that X work but it turns out X is not as effective as Y or it might be even harmful.

I'm shocked that you see the public officials and scientists almighty infallible beings. Wow, is that some kind of religion?

If they failed at something, it could be due incompetence or expectations being beyond what humanly is possible or maybe they screwed up at communicating it or maybe they even lied on what's possible but there's no logical construct where public officials choose to continue the spread of the virus despite the public achieving immunity beyond the promised levels.

The premise of all this is simply appalling.

I love these medieval analogies. They really put things in perspective, morally. Just in the opposite of the way they are intended.

What's the perspective? Is it something like it's too barbaric to be susceptible to viruses in the 21st century? What is the moral angle here?

That covid restrictionists are suffering from an anachronistic, authoritarian fever dream. Unfortunately, it seems that it is contagious and there is no known cure.

Okay, what's the alternative for the medieval measures? Vaccine mandates? Let it run, live with the survivors?

Not when your certificate starts to expire every 6 months like in Israel

When are the participating countries going to get rid of it? When is the pandemic over?

If transmission rates stay under 1 over the winter, I would expect (hope) next summer we can kill it for good.

Not gonna happen, sadly, as long as there are irresponsible neighbours like the UK, where I sadly happen to live (for my sins).

What percentage of your population has antibodies from any source? In the USA, the majority of us now have antibodies from vaccination or past infection.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25398704...

"More than 80% of Americans have coronavirus antibodies acquired through infection or vaccination, according to a new study of over 1.4 million blood donations across the U.S."

Irresponsible country was Latvia (EU country) who barely managed to vaccinate only half of its elderly so far. The government was completely inefficient, they did not even allowed to send a letter in Russian, in a country where nearly half of population are Russian speakers. Now they just had to reintroduce a strict lockdown for another month. I think they well deserved it.

Absolutely agree, now traveling outside of Europe is as easy as between European regions, this is so much more consistent!

Are we travelling in the same continent?

Travel is a huge PITA in Europe. Tons of different ever changing regulations, not to mention expensive tests from tons of unreliable newly-sprung companies with little reputation. I had to book tests in advance and sometimes on returns. It's a massive pain and tourism was heavily impacted.

I wish the government would pay for this stupid bureaucracy instead it's small businesses which are going to die.

The US implemented it correctly: you're vaccinated -> you can travel without hassle.

Unless you are a European.

I think Schengen Area is there for that and it worked much better and easier.

In the original article, the picture shows exactly how the internet would react : https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/tecnologia/software_app/202...

By generating Adolf Hitlers GreenPass ..

>By generating Adolf Hitlers GreenPass ..

TBH that is pretty hitlarious :) Though it could get you in trouble in Austria and Germany.

I think that the point – to show that the certificate system is about total nazi style control.

I think you're wrong here. They're not showing any Nazi style control, just hackers often display their results in ways that are edgy in order to draw attention to themselves from the mainstream media.

Well, they could have chosen the name of EU president or some head of the state, or Jesus. This one is selected with a message on top of all this attention seeking.

Nobody cares who the EU president is, but everyone in the word knows who Adolf Hitler was, so it's an edgy and effective way to grab headlines.

When a German security team discovered problems with vaccination certificates, they generated a card for Robert Koch [0]. Really better way to demonstrate the vulnerability without offending people.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/security-flaws-uncovered-in-eu-vaccina...

>Really better way to demonstrate the vulnerability without offending people.

Who was offended?

The keys are revocable and replaceable (and it was probably a member state set of keys), so it shouldn't be too big of a deal

Are you suggesting that a few hundreds millions certificate shall be re-issued, distributed either in person, or per email, or even per post for some countries? Sounds easy :-)

Depends on how many certificates become invalid now.

Yeah, if half-smart, certificates should expire relatively frequently to contain damage in such a scenario.

And there are those that want to move our entire fiat money system on to digital ledgers. I'll pass thanks.

They're already on digital ledgers, not sure how you think governments move billions to banks each and every night.

Who says the feds system can't be hacked and extra money couldn't be created? It's one central authority, crypto doesn't have to be.

It's because the feds are already the biggest thieves in the world, they already created 40% of all dollars in the last 12 months - they don't fear small competitors.

Oof, non-english gdpr popup. Not sure which option I'm supposed to select.

I'm italian and still had trouble. Anyway, I think the right options are Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A.

let's index millions of people's personal and health data, including their exposure to dna-altering drugs that might have health repercussions for years afterwards... and secure them so well than some kid can create and sign a record for a mister adolf Hitler. what can go wrong?

Where's the DNA altering drug? Sounds cool.

The myth about vaccines equaling gene therapy has been debunked multiple times [1].

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-mrna-gene-id...

getting debunkers' attention, these days, is proof enough that the claim is true. this is not even controversial lol. "vaccines" manufacturers itself describe them as rna vectors. modeRNA has it in its name and stock ticker. it's surprising how stupid propagandists are.

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