Faking a Positive Covid Test | Hacker News Reader

Faking a Positive Covid Test

labs.f-secure.com

Also this device has a recall for false positives: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-recalls/e...

The "Bluetooth" hardware looks similar to this: https://hackaday.com/2020/09/09/digital-pregnancy-tests-use-...

Because $25 of electronics to read a $1 paper strip makes perfect sense in today's world I guess. As does not making the strip a replaceable consumable part.

There are a lot of products out there that, just because they are possible, does not mean they should be built.

Can you imagine the rooms where people come up with stuff like this? A world of PowerPoint slides and consulting Mumbo-jumbo

> Because $25 of electronics to read a $1 paper strip makes perfect sense in today's world I guess

This makes sense, because you can calibrate the sensor in the factory and not worry about "is that a faint line I am seeing? Do faint lines count?" situation anymore. Converting continuous data to a simple yes/no output has value.

> As does not making the strip a replaceable consumable part.

This may or may not make sense based on the requirements for maintaining calibration. I am not sure about this.

It's not hard to write "Faint lines count" in the test instructions. Any line at all is a positive test.

You have to take into account the effect the extra cost has as well - if it's between doing one automated bluetooth test that costs $25 or 5 manual tests which cost $5 each - the 5 tests is clearly a better outcome for society.

> the 5 tests is clearly a better outcome for society.

I don't think that's obviously true. Misread pregnancy tests are fantastically common, and someone mistakenly believing they don't have covid is going to be a significant negative for society.

Instructions simply don't work, a large number of people don't read instructions. Heck, I might not read the instructions for this if it looked understandable at first glance. Decades of pointless barely-understandable instructions on cheap devices have trained me not to bother.

It's pretty tricky to self-administer one of these lateral flow covid tests without reading the instructions. There's a whole sequence of steps - swabbing, mixing the swab in the buffer solution, dropping a set number of drops into the sample window. This device doesn't appear to get rid of any of that complexity - instead adding significant complexity and to the simplest part of the test - look for a line.

Indeed, there's also considerable variability in the different lateral flow tests. If you don't read the instructions then you may not work out the differences when the next set come along.

In the UK we have, amongst others I'm sure, the NHS branded boxes, Flowflex, and Orient Gene.

Some require swabbing nose and throat, some are just nasal swabs. Some require 2 drops onto the device, some require 4. Some require a certain amount of time to be left in the buffer solution, others just a set of steps of pushing/turning/squeezing the swab in the buffer. Some require waiting 30 minutes (minimum), some are 15 minutes (minimum) and 30 minutes maximum. etc.

I somehow managed to miss the critical fact that the line can be very faint for quite a long time.

I'm a developer. I suck at reading documentation.

>if it's between doing one automated bluetooth test that costs $25 or 5 manual tests which cost $5 each - the 5 tests is clearly a better outcome for society.

are we talking about doing 5 tests on the same women, or doing 5 tests on different women?

> Any line at all is a positive test.

It's not obvious what counts as a "faint line" -- is this too faint? Is it not really there? Am I misreading natural variations in the colour of the test strip?

It's not a matter of reading instructions -- even intelligent adults who have followed the directions 100% correctly can still struggle with knowing what counts.

Anyone who has ever taken a pregnancy test (or seen someone else take a pregnancy test), can tell you about the major amounts of stress possible attempting to read a "simple faint line" -- see https://www.reddit.com/r/TFABLinePorn/ for one example.

I'm not saying that every test strip needs $20 of Bluetooth gizmos and e-waste. Just that normal, intelligent, fully-instruction-following adults can reasonably be expected to not always know how to read "any faint lines" accurately.

On the contrary, it is extremely clear what counts as a faint line. If its different from the white background, in any way or shape, the test is positive. Simple as that. It couldn't actually be more simple, but someone had to over-engineer and forget about security during the process.

Example here [1] (as linked elsewhere throughout this thread)

[1] https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1471493781073530882

Not to mention motivated reasoning/perception. Is this positive test going to mean you’re going to cancel your holiday plans and lose thousands of dollars?

> It's not obvious what counts as a "faint line" -- is this too faint? Is it not really there? Am I misreading natural variations in the colour of the test strip?

If you think of how the test works, then it is obvious that if you can spot the line it is positive.

I have literally no idea how the test works; I'm a software engineer.

They're supposed to be similar to pregnancy tests right? But those detect hormones afaik, not viruses (or antibodies).

The test contains antibodies for the virus, so if they react in any way (assuming you weren't tampering with it[1]) then you have the virus. Those tests are considered unreliable, because the false negative is high (i.e. not enough of the virus to register).

I don't know enough about pregnancy test, but I assume the hormone is always present, it's just certain level of it signals pregnancy.

[1] there were videos where people where testing juices and soft drinks and that was messing up the test.

Problem is, I can often see the faint line right out of the package, before any reagent or sample is applied. I get really OCD about that.

The tests I have here say if you see any lines that are not the control line the test is not good. You might want to double check and contact the manufacturer.

I may be imagining the lines. But there’s no difference between imagining one and seeing one when it comes to your confidence level and thus the value of the test. Google “imagining faint line” and see what a common problem it is.

There was an interesting thread last week about different abilities to visualize images in your head - some people describe visualizing things in a faint sort of way, not a full on visual hallucination. Take that ability, mix it with the anxiety of fearing a test result and the tendency to second guess yourself, and I think you can see the value of electronics making the determination for you.

What I have been wondering about is a positive line showing up after 3 hours. I've had this happen consistently, and found no indication of what to do. The official docs say any results after 30 minutes are void. But why? Does the false positive rate go up to high? What could cause false positives.

I have had a few PCRs that all said negative, but the quicktest really worried me.

the machine readers that doctors and hospitals use for test strips are used hundreds of times per day on multiple samples

I am sure reusable machines exist. What I am not sure (really not sure, it may or may not be feasible) is if they can be made at consumer-level price point and with consumer limitations (e.g. no requirement for maintenance or calibration for the lifetime of the device). I imagine the professional devices cost thousands of dollars and undergo regular maintenance.

> a simple yes/no output has value

The line is a boolean indicator. Either it's there or it isn't. People are dumb as rocks but come on, what's the next step ? Shipping a doctor with every test ? We maybe need a bluetooth sensor in masks because apparently people don't know if they should use them above or under their nose....

I'm pretty sure our brains are more than calibrated enough to discern basic shapes and colors.

These tests are an insult to our intelligence.

>The line is a boolean indicator. Either it's there or it isn't.

No it's not. The world is analog, not digital. The parent comment specifically mentions this:

>and not worry about "is that a faint line I am seeing? Do faint lines count?" situation

Have you used these tests ? Have you read their manuals ? Of course the world is analog, it doesn't prevent me from assessing if I have socks on or not, or if my light bulb is on or off ...

Faint lines do count, as stated in the documentation, if your eyes can see something it means it's positive, that's all there is to know, these tests have been designed to be used by humans...

Having used the tests multiple times (including the Ellume tests), and having Covid positive and negative results (due to a child getting it twice!! this year)?

It is really hard to tell sometimes. And sometimes people don’t want to see a specific answer, and will fight over if something is positive or not.

The Binax now faint line for instance can be really faint-but-still positive, and I personally got in an argument with his mom over if it counted as positive or not (day 5 and 5th positive test in a row, with decreasing line clarity each time).

>And sometimes people don’t want to see a specific answer, and will fight over if something is positive or not.

This sounds like an entirely different issue. Seems like they could write off the results of the Bluetooth device readout as well if they wanted: "oh it must be faulty"

Nope - The line can be quite faint and it leaves a decent amount of room for interpretation

As a precious comment stated "any visible line is a positive result"

No ifs, ands, or buts. There is no room for interpretation according to the manufacturer instructions.

You clearly have not used the test in this scenario. If I could post a picture I would.

Good luck!

>Have you used these tests ? Have you read their manuals ?

I don't see how personal experience plays into this. If you used it and you saw a solid line, that's not really indicative what the edge cases could be.

>if I have socks on or not

skin-colored stockings can be pretty hard to discern

>or if my light bulb is on or off ...

right, because the electrical grid is fairly stable, and light bulbs are mass manufactured with high precision. That means most of the variables that can affect brightness are removed. This can't be said for covid tests. If the light bulb was hooked up to a hand crank generator I'd have trouble figuring out whether the bulb was "on" as well.

>Faint lines do count, as stated in the documentation, if your eyes can see something it means it's positive

and what about lighting conditions? visual acuity? the purpose of the device is to remove variables so the test is more consistent.

The line can be very, very faint, and not everyone has better than the median eye acuity.

https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1471493781073530882

Very easy to see the third one is positive unless you are unwilling to or have an eye issue.

True, but the binax test for instance has clear photographed examples of what positive, F pos and erroneous tests are. I do not trust a bluetooth reader over a human interpretation - if it's ambiguous to read, we should know that, right?

Why are examples useful? Is there an example of "This is the minimum that counts as positive"? What if I am unable to visually distinguish that example from a negative? If I am able to visually distinguish them, then what if there is a line but it's fainter than that minimum? You can't guarantee that both of these are impossible, because different people have different visual capabilities.

https://www.fda.gov/media/144574/download page 6. It shows different gradations. That's what i'm saying, if you cannot tell the differnce in the instructions, you know not to trust the result

If the reader is calibrated and tested to be as good as a trained human with perfect eyesight, that seems better on average than relying on untrained humans with unknown eyesight. Heck, it could even be better as it would be able to supply a controlled lighting condition by measuring off a known LED.

Maybe that's not the case for this specific case, but consider this: https://i.redd.it/t29m67i6hch21.jpg. I personally can't see any number. But people tell me that there is a number here. When I use an app named "Color Blind Pal" with the "shift" function, I can see a 16. I'd like to have something that just tell me the number on the plate and not depend on my vision.

> if your eyes can see something

This is not a consistent standard from person to person.

>This makes sense, because you can calibrate the sensor in the factory and not worry about "is that a faint line I am seeing? Do faint lines count?" situation anymore. Converting continuous data to a simple yes/no output has value.

But can you trust this calibrations? I bought a infrared thermometer and for some fucking reason for my son always shows at least +1 degrees but is fine for everyone else in the family. I discovered this only after a few days where his fever would not calm down and I found some old thermometers and confirm that is broken(still shows fever for him a month later and I could not find any logical explanation what is special with my son)

AFAIK 1 degree does not count as a fever, especially in children. That's within the range of normal variation.

I think they’re saying it always seems to be off by one degree for their son compared to other thermometers.

It is always over 38 Celsius which qualifies as fever where under the tongue is 1 degree less. So if I use it on my I get 36.4 on my son I get 38.4 , even if I try different areas of the body is still converges on the high value.

Re: IR thermometers, the temperature measurement is related to surface emissivity (basically the fraction of heat that gets radiated as light), which can be pretty variable between people (skin grease, cosmetics, sweat). As well as variability in blood flow etc. if it's a forehead measurement.

In the antigen test strip case one would hope the materials and lighting to be controlled, so less risk of miscalibration (even if it's a stupid way to satisfy somebody's demand for a test to be made "quantifiable")

>Re: IR thermometers, the temperature measurement is related to surface emissivity (basically the fraction of heat that gets radiated as light), which can be pretty variable between people (skin grease, cosmetics, sweat). As well as variability in blood flow etc. if it's a forehead measurement.

I tried different areas of the body too like cheeks, hands, neck. I did not know that there is such a chance that a new, expensive device can have such an issue, I trusted this device because worked on me and I was worried a few days why the fever is not going down (it was COVID so it was a tense situation).

I did not found in the manual of the device or in my online searches at that time cases where same device can have such a variation from person to person. As a conclusion I would advice to also keep a contact thermometer in the house, and double check the IR one(there will be some differences depending the place where you use the thermometer so one should keep that in mind)

Most certainly not at that cost.

Easy access to tests is much more important than ridiculously inflated prices. There is no value at all to this, not for COVID lateral flow ag tests, it’s complete bullshit.

Those tests have to be plentiful, it has to be easy to get and make one. This also seems to be the case pretty much everywhere except in the US which is so weird. I read all these discussions about lateral flow ag tests from the US and they are like from another fucking planet. Why are those so hard to get in the US? And so expensive?

They are free and plentiful here (at test stations, insurance doesn’t matter) and still cheap enough in grocery stores to just have a couple dozen at home.

This device feels so "wasty" to mee. PCB, battery, enclosure, box, etc. just to read a simple strip test. Boggles my mind

Not just wasteful in materials, but absurdly expensive, too.

They're $40/test to buy. An additional $20 for the proctoring on top of that.

You can get two of the Binaxnow tests for $14, or a proctored one for $25. (And those are the inflated US prices; they're $4 in the EU.)

Where does it cost $4 in the EU? That price sounds subsidized. Foreigners in France pay €29 for antigen tests. French citizens pay a much lower regulated price. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210630-covid-19-test...

In the US, even PCR tests are free with insurance.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-do-covid-rapi...

> More than a year ago, Abbott said it would sell BinaxNOW in bulk for $5 a test to health care providers, but that option isn't available over the counter to the public. Even with the anticipated price decrease, a two-pack will be more than $15. Abbott didn't comment further.

https://www.propublica.org/article/heres-why-rapid-covid-tes...

> Asked why its rapid tests are abundant and cheap in Europe and scarce in the U.S., Abbott spokesperson John Koval chalked it up to Europe’s public support, both in its regulatory system and through government funding.

Part of the problem is the approval process. Abbott doesn't have much competition; they've had upwards of 90% of the US market for much of the pandemic. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/why-you-cant-find-cheap-...

> Some experts say the FDA’s approach to clearing rapid tests has been onerous and overly focused on exceptional accuracy to detect positive results, rather than on what would really benefit people en masse: speedy results. The main use of rapid tests is to screen people so they can safely attend work, school, meetings or gatherings. This screening can then be followed up with a more sensitive, lab-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for diagnosis.

edit: "In the US, even PCR tests are free with insurance" is only true if symptomatic. They are not free for precautionary testing you might take before something like a family holiday dinner.

"through government funding" contains the answer. The test is cheaper in the US than it is in France without it and about the same price as the subsidized price in France.

1. So subsidize it. Just a few weeks ago the White House laughed at the idea of distributing free tests; now they're finally doing it after basically the entire public health world said "that's not a laughing matter, we should absolutely do it". Cheap, abundant tests are a key tool to safely conducting family/group gatherings.

2. The same sentence includes "both in its regulatory system", and I've cited the issues with the US in this regard.

I think it depends on whether you want to buy a test kit, or have the test conducted and certified for you.

For buying the kit, for example https://www.siegmund.care/10x-COVID-19-Antigen-Selbsttest-SA... 10x antigen test for 28.56 € including VAT, which is around USD 33.

The high cost is a good thing then, because it acts as a deterrent.

Otherwise, we would see millions of these devices polluting the environment.

I certainly hope that's not the logic anyone in power is using.

"Good news! We have tests. Bad news: We don't want you to use any."

The point of cheap, readily available antigen testing is so people can more safely do things like gather, go to school, etc. Making them expensive as a "deterrent" would be counter productive; treating a COVID patient uses orders of magnitude more plastic.

There are tests, and there are pointless consumer devices that happen to have a test inside.

Testing is great. Just go to any place where they do the testing and in less than two hours you get the result by email. Antigens or PCR test are available.

I have tested myself in these labs several times already. Just not at home with a wasteful plastic device.

They are polluting the environment because they ship with useless plastics, PCB, batteries and not because they are expensive. Testing shouldn't be a luxury, that's silly.

make_it_decision = (BOM < consumer_value);

Tangentially, if someone is looking for a business idea, reusable pregnancy tests are an untapped market last time I knew anything about it.

That's how digital pregnancy tests work- just a simple sensor that detects the line on the strip

So… Fun story about how I submitted semi false COVID paperwork in order to gain entry into Italy.

In September my wife and I went on a delayed vacation to Italy. At the time they required Covid tests to be completed no more than three days before arrival (we were flying all day Tuesday). {Sidebar… In Italy it took us 15 minutes to get Covid tests with no scheduling. Walked right in and on our way. No wonder they thought a couple days was enough time.}

We scheduled Covid tests for Sunday and could only do PCR since no one was offering rapid tests within Ohio - or at least, nearby.

As we pull up to the window, we are told that, since it is Sunday and the next day is memorial day the lab will get our samples on Tuesday and we’ll have our results on Wednesday (remember, we arrive on Tuesday).

So we declined testing and happened to find the last two Binax Now non-proctored self-tests in the area. We take the tests and both test negative. We submit a negative result to the Binax website (no one has checked anything. - I think it was a literal “not positive” checkbox), get confirmation emails, and upload them to the United website.

They take hers but declined mine for being taken too far outside of the three day window… even though we took them and uploaded same day.

I tried two more times, declined two more times.

So I think… My birthday was a few days before we took the test, I wonder if the automated systems or screeners are picking up on my birthday and rejecting it.

*So I take the email into Mac’s preview app, drag a white box over my date of birth, save, upload.*

Success.

No one stops us at United, no one stops us at customs, no one questions us at all.

After we arrived in Rome I realized I could have literally found a copy of the email on the Internet, put my name and test time in, and uploaded.

And that’s how we got to go on vacation to Italy.

I had a similar experience; no one scanned my BinaxNow proctored test's QR code. Just having one was enough; I could've easily presented a doctored screenshot.

There are probably spot checks, and I don't doubt the country I was in would have happily detained and fined me had I failed one, but it was a bit disconcerting right before hopping on an eight hour flight with a bunch of other people subject to similarly lax enforcement.

A plane is one of the least likely places to catch Covid thanks to the constant air circulation and filtration. Cabin air is entirely replaced every 2-3 minutes, which is quicker than the air circulation in negative pressure hospital rooms.

That's likely to prevent "the whole plane got it" scenarios, but a lot less likely to prevent "the person sitting next to me coughed the whole time" ones.

My proctored test didn't even have a qr code, it had some 20 character unique id but I highly doubt anyone would take the time to call the phone number and verify, having gone out of the country a couple times and back in. For the US side these are the flight check in clerks checking, not even government agents.

It's honestly insulting how easy it would be to fake. As a law abiding citizen, we jump through all these hoops, but as a criminal, you spend 5 minutes at home in photoshop and your test is 99.99% guaranteed to work. Hell you edit the unique ID I was talking about to just be invalid, I bet even if they check they'll just force you to get tested again thinking it was a system error.

> As a law abiding citizen, we jump through all these hoops

This is not like a regular law where evading the law and the negative outcome are 1:1 correlated E.g. smuggling a bomb onto a plane. In this case the people who lead to a negative outcome are not aware that they have the virus.

If you think you don't have COVID then the upside to faking a test is low enough that very few people take that path.

I'm not sure if that's true, if you have to travel for some reason and you take the test and are found to not have covid, you obviously don't have any reason to fake it.

However if you're going to a wedding/see family member/some other trip you value, and you do test positive, you now have quite a good reason to fake it, and if at any point in the past you have a valid test with no QR code on it, could easily modify the date.

It's pretty easy to lie to a border control agent. That's also pretty high on a list of bad ideas.

Yeah that’s the kind of thing I’d use a throwaway account to talk about …

Also knowing Italy, nobody checks. Really.

I took a plane from Italy to Greece a couple of months ago: completely vaccinated and with the Passenger Locator Form ready.

Nobody, literally nobody, checked in a reliable way wheter:

- we had a valid COVID Certificate

- our PLF was filled correctly

The only moment during my trip where anyone checked was at Starbucks.

This doesn't mean that you are entitled to lie to the border control agents though.

I've travelled internationally maybe a couple of hundred times and never had my bags searched (that I know of, who knows for ones checked in at airports) until one trip a few years ago when I arrived back in UK and customs officers pulled me over to spend 15 minutes making me get every item out of both of my bags.

It's a bad idea to travel with false paperwork, as it's a bad idea to travel with anything illegal in your luggage, not because there's a high chance they'll definitely look into your situation, but because if they happen to choose you randomly then the punishment can be severe.

Agreed, but I don't think the commenter you're replying to is claiming to have lied to border control agents. They're just pointing out that no one was actually checking their documents for validity, and the one automated check that happened wasn't even accurate.

This is correct. No lying was needed (we did do the tests, they were negative, etc.) Only I was forced to alter the documents because the automated systems kept rejecting mine due to my birthday being too close, but outside of the window (as evidenced by it immediately accepting it once I removed my birthday).

No, MrDunham didn't lie, not in any material way, but he made this comment: "After we arrived in Rome I realized I could have literally found a copy of the email on the Internet, put my name and test time in, and uploaded."

That's what I was responding to.

Depends on the country. I would expect Italians to be far more relaxed than Americans.

Fact is that people plainly don't know how official or authentic information looks like in case of anything Covid. Was at a barber last week and he has to check my vaccination status. I presented my QR code, she looked at it for a few seconds and then was already happy. You are supposed to scan it with another app but nobody seems to know this... Perhaps she can read QR codes in her head?

Your story doesn’t make any sense. Rapid tests have been available in America since at least the spring. Also you said you were going in September and Memorial Day is in May.

He's obviously thinking of Labor Day. I mix them up myself. I believe HN guidelines suggest steel manning here, not accusing him of being nonsensical because of a simple mistake.

Also, programmers often confuse Halloween and Christmas, because OCT 31 = DEC 25.

Not only are you correct (I mixed them up), but now I know about steel manning and am a fan. Thanks for the support and understanding - have a wonderful day!

"Available" and available are two different things, and I'd guess OP probably meant Labor Day instead of Memoridal Day.

I can say that in my area of the US, the only tests that could be found were PCR, 2-3 days for results.

Thanks, you're correct on all counts.

Labor day. The tests are "available" but not available anywhere nearby for us. PCR only (maybe they're actually available now, but they weren't then.)

Anyways I really need to stop posting to HN in the AM before I've had enough coffee... I make too many half-brained stupid mistakes.

Probably meant Labor Day

Shoot. You're correct. You'd think since my mother went into labor with me on labor day, I'd actually remember it. Thanks.

Crap. Yes I meant Labor day. You'd think since my mother went into labor with me on labor day, I'd actually remember it.

That's what I get for posting in the morning. Good catch.

I recently gained entry to an NBA game out of state (away from home and without access to any valid paperwork) by using devtools to edit the results page of a test I had last year, to make it valid for that day, and then printing the page. The clinic in question is all over the state and partnered with a major regional hospital, and they use a very basic means to print the page; just some media css.

For every burden of proof, enterprising people are going to find a way around it. There's now a vast market of spoofed, lookalike QR code destinations on the web that your average Joe isn't going to be able to spot the difference for in a quick glance. WRT gaining entry to the NBA game, the person inspecting paperwork didn't spend more than a half second looking at what I presented. I could have simple printed "negative" on a piece of paper with a bunch of Lorem Ipsum. It was complete theater.

You can do rapid test remotely, by doing self test via skype with doctor. It gives you EU valid cert, all legal.

I flew to Cyprus in October from within the EU. Had an EU vaccine certificate which was supposed to mean that no test was required for me. Also had some Cyprus health form I filled out with a QR code. But they made our whole flight stand in a crowded line, inside a building, and instead of scanning the QR codes from our documents, they manually wrote down our names and phone number on a piece of paper, and then made each of us take a COVID test on the spot, and then sent us through immigration before our results came in. Our vaccine certificates and other documents were never checked. Apparently, their plan was to call us a few days later if a test came back positive.

Related: I got a big snicker out of DefCon this year requiring proof of vaccination. "Uhhh don't y'all host presentations on how to fabricate credentials?"

Hah! This got a nice laugh out of me. Can't imagine the number of unique challenges that arise due to DefCon's audience and content. (Not implying bad, just... different. For example fabricating credentials.)

I used to host some small-mid sized events (100-200 person hackathons) and that was difficult enough without having anyone poking around at my security/processes.

I flew to Spain (from elsewhere in the EU) in September, my wife was not vaccinated so had to do all the extra paperwork and antigen tests both ways. We registered online with the Spanish health ministry before flying and were provided with a QR code, you have to say whether you are vaccinated, and if not are told you need to show a private negative test result on arrival.

On the way we were asked if we had a negative test at the airport, we showed it but they didn't look at it. On arrival they just asked to see the QR codes, not the test result.

The actual private antigen test results could very easily be altered with Preview.app. Most that we've done so far have a QR code that goes to a hosted version of the certificate, but nobody has ever scanned it. I wonder what would happen if you change it to a URL that returns a 404 - or even just remove it, one I took recently didn't even have that.

Security theatre for sure. Whenever I've travelled, I've been more worried that I might not have the right paperwork than catching COVID.

> Whenever I've travelled, I've been more worried that I might not have the right paperwork than catching COVID.

That's the enforcement mechanism that ensures the test is legitimate, not the QR code.

If you fake a test result then you've committed fraud in a foreign country. If you take a real test, are positive, and travel anyway then you're knowingly violating the law and there is a non zero chance you'll be caught.

I don't see how it is theatre when you admit that it achieved its aim of having you and your wife take a test pre- travel.

This is literally what people are doing in my area to fake COVID vaccine verification PDFs.

The one I have, you can use a red marker and lightly draw 2 lines in the space where they would appear if you have covid.

Exactly, these devices are meant for personal use. Why would you want to fiddle with the results?

I was wondering that... Potentially where the implications of quarantine are not as bad, as say, going to work? Or maybe to inconvenience someone?

Maybe insurance fraud? If you were somehow covered or wanted a refund on some travel. But again, I can't imagine a policy which explicitly covers COVID being beneficial for the underwriter.

To satisfy family members over Christmas.

"I'm sorry I can't join the family meal, I have tested positive"

You don't need a test to lie.

You don't have to send a doctor's note to your granny to skip holiday luncheon? That's just anarchical.

Yes but this way you only need to keep track of one lie instead of a bunch of lies, like the kind of covid test you took or when you took the test. More mental load to remember falsehoods than to remember truths. Or so I've heard.

>Exactly, these devices are meant for personal use. Why would you want to fiddle with the results?

My experience has been that you can at least get a day off depending on your organisation's policy or until you receive a negative result on a PCR confirmation test. Think perhaps about that business trip that you really don't want to make. I remember reading reports on schoolchildren coming up with chemical solutions (IIRC cola) to fake positive covid testing results in order to skip school. A slightly "techier" covid testing product like the one from the article might placate a more suspicious employer.

In some areas, testing positive means paid leave.

Here, such devices are used for testing kids at basic school. I heard a story from one of our managers that some kid in his kids' class wanted to fake his test to read positive (to evade school duties) so he used a pen marker however this attempt was discovered :-)

It's even easier than that for the tests we have here in Eastern Canada.

You can spit a bit of cola or orange juice on it and it'll false positive. Rumor says that children are all aware of it and using this strategy to ditch school.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/it-s-not-the-real-thing-youth-tr...

Wow, middle school me would have abused the heck out of this.

Middle school you might have even wanted you to go to school, to see some other people than your close family.

(Most children of schoolage I knew in germany, after long lockdowns, think like that. Poor children, they have it so bad, they even want to go to school again..)

Middle school me would have made sure all the people I didn't like, knew about the trick so they could skip school and leave me in peace at school.

So this does show my ignorance - but if I wanted to fake a Lateral Flow test, what chemicals would I need to fool one of the "normal" swab based tests that do not use bluetooth?

OK - so I know it detects "IgG neutralising antibodies that target the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein" - but surely there is a hack ...

Not that I want to hack it, (I mean why?) but just interested ...

This article was on the BBC earlier this year, when the "pingdemic" was happening in the UK: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210705-how-children-are...

Kids realised they could get time off school if they faked a positive LFT so were using soft drinks to create false positive.

How true – or widespread – it is, I have no idea.

Remember your Karnaugh maps in school? Those logic diagrams where you use boolean operators to cover as large a space as possible on the map, which results in as simple as possible a boolean expression? And how much you appreciated the "don't cares" because it made it so easy?

For similar reasons, a cheap binary test for X is inevitably going to be easy to convince to give positive or negative results [1] for a wide variety of substances not considered by the test creator, because you just can't make a cheap test that tests COVID-19 and exactly and only COVID-19. Basically, every presented substance other than a correctly-done test is a "don't care". The resulting test takes advantage of this, and it will map quite a lot of things to either true or false outside of the domain of interest. I don't know if such a test would even be possible to create strictly 100% accurate, but certainly for a lot more expense we could get much closer than we do today. But we wouldn't be shipping some swabs and some strips, we'd be shipping tests where mass spectrometers would be a key component, along with a very large instruction book.

But for situations where the test is being taken in good faith, who needs that?

And the expense it would take to stop kids faking the test itself is too silly to contemplate. Instead, while the news articles didn't mention it, I'm sure where this cheating was endemic they took the simple step of making the child do it in front of them. That only raises the bar, but it'd be enough for the vast majority of the cases.

The math makes this inevitable, by the fact that the set of inputs that could be presented to a test is effectively infinite. It can't hardly be false that of the thousands of substances you have ready access to, quite a few of them will produce false positives. This is also not specific to "COVID-19", it's true of any of the simple paper strip tests. In practice, though, this is just a curiosity, not a problem.

[1]: e.g., while I don't know if this would work, if you want to fake a false test, add in some bleach to your sample. I haven't tried it and won't but I wouldn't be surprised something caustic like that would simply destroy both COVID-19 and the test itself, in relatively small quantities. If not bleach, something else.

Too bad Abby Hoffman can't write Steal This COVID Test as the follow-up to Steal This Urine Test

According to [1] applying "a few drops of cola or orange juice" will produce a positive result on a lateral flow test.

The journalist writing the article successfully tested it themselves.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210705-how-children-are...

This really sounds like "anything with mild acid in it".

Kids in the UK were in the news for doing this to get out of school a few months back [1].

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/02/uk-pupils-oran...

My rapid antigen tests come with positive and negative control samples. I think that would be easiest: just “swab” with the positive control and it will always show as positive.

If covid really is the greatest threat to our society like the media leads us to believe, covid testing and vaccine passports can't be on the honor system or easily faked. We need a new government agency like the "Public Health Compliance Administration" (similar to the DEA or TSA) to enforce the compliance. Non-compliance would result in huge fines or felonies. PHCA officers would have the authority to raid houses suspected of hosting super-spreader events (birthday parties, thanksgiving dinners, etc.) and or stop and test random people in restaurants, arresting those who are unvaccinated with a fake passport.

Sounds crazy, but we are on the path to increasingly authoritarian covid compliance. Other countries are even further along that path.

I personally think covid is no longer an emergency with the advent of vaccines. I say leave it up to the individual whether to get vaccinated or not, and implement bed rationing for the unvaccinated if ICUs are over capacity. Otherwise there is no endgame, we will wring our hands and live in fear until the end of time.

I personally think covid is no longer an emergency with the advent of the pill.

In a few months, I expect it will be over.

I would love for it to be "over" in a few months, but until the media stops fear mongering every variant and case rates and such it won't be over.

Do you mean horse dewormer pills?

They should make them really huge and taste terrible and turn your pee blue, just to fuck with people stupid enough to take them for Covid.

umvi:

It would already be long over with vastly fewer deaths, if only certain politicians and their followers hadn't downplayed it and lied about it from the beginning, and made not wearing masks and not social distancing and not getting vaccinated and instead popping horse pills hot-button political issues, all the while accusing the scientists and media of fear mongering, when the media was actually just reporting the scientific facts that trained experts were telling them, but that those certain politicians were systematically ignoring and lying about.

Fear mongering about the dangers of Covid may annoy and inconvenience you, but the most deadly, consequential, and intentionally deceptive fear mongering is from the lies and propaganda those politicians and their media outlets are spreading against vaccines and masks and social distancing.

qwertywert_:

And how much do you want to bet that the exact same people presently popping horse dewormer pills while refusing for political reasons to social distance, wear masks, or get vaccinated are going to also refuse to take the Pfizer pill because they decided to make it a political issue too?

If they don't trust science and Pfizer and their vaccines, then why would they ever trust Pfizer's pills? (Which begs the question: why the hell do they trust horse dewormer pills if they don't trust vaccines? Answer: because they were told to.)

Those people would eat lead coated asbestos pills if their cult leader told them to.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-as...

https://www.asbestos.com/news/2018/07/11/russia-asbestos-tru...

It's never going to be over until after those people have finished selecting themselves out of the gene pool, and that's going be a long painful time, while they're dragging many innocent people down with them.

No there's a Pfizer pill now, they are in phase 2/3.

oh ok well as long as it's a Pfizer pill

What in the (insert various expletives here) made you react such poorly?

This is not the place for such knee-jerk reactions.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/covid-new-pill-pf...

And more important IMO:

https://en.mercopress.com/2021/11/16/patents-of-pfizer-s-pil...

In India it's become quite common to fake an RTPCR test by changing the dates on an existing one. All you have to show here is a pdf copy of your test as you get off your flight and no one checks the feasibility of the test via the given qr code, they just check the date and that's it.

> Implement additional obfuscation and OS checks in the Android app

Hold my beer.

Last I checked almost all lateral flow tests could be faked with a drop of orange juice or coca cola. Was quite common here in schools with kids using them to get sent home and generally troll.

This is all cool and stuff, but kids in the UK found a way after the first lockdown by dipping the lateral flow test into coke

There's one night every minute.

Why did all of the "save the planet" and "stop polluting" crowd turn a blind eye to bad excuses for products like this?

I'm certain the amount of single use things have shot up in the last 2 years under the covid banner and the fact it's getting not just a free pass but celebrated by some is nauseating.

Everything has a cost/benefit analysis.

The waste from COVID testing is a rounding error on the damage we're doing to the environment, and it's got a lot more societal benefit than, say, the plastic wrapper on a banana (https://twitter.com/flybyday63/status/1006650858505949190).

>The waste from COVID testing is a rounding error on the damage we're doing to the environment

Citation needed. In most countries except Japan or the US I haven't seen single wrapped bananas.

Even the normal covid tests produce so much plastic trash. This adds electronics which are even worse waste.

All to determine with terribly low accuracy that someone has covid.

These specific tests are wasteful; I think Bluetooth is an absurd addition to what works quite well as a plain old analog test strip.

It's a bit like banning single-use plastic straws, though. The overall contribution to the waste in landfills and oceans is tiny in the grand scheme of things.

Our family has taken probably a dozen tests. The plastic from all that would fit in a quart-sized ziplock. A drop in the bucket, and that's likely to hold on the global scale.

>Our family has taken probably a dozen tests.

In some places you have to get tested every day at the job. It adds up quickly. Or every day when you want to go out.

The cost of at-home tests (and availability issues; they're pretty much universally sold out here at the moment) in the US means basically no one here would dream of testing "every day when you want to go out" as is possible in, say, the UK.

You won’t believe how much plastic trash is produced by hospitals treating Covid patients.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118

Sure, but the tests are so inaccurate that a lot of people still spread covid, any time the government instituted extreme testing measures there was 0 dent in the covid cases. Where from a statistical perspective you would expect a similar dent in the number of prevented cases if this worked.

They did a test of the tests he in Germany and basically 6/7 failed to be positive for everything except huge viral loads where you would feel seriously sick anyway. So it's not even clear these tests help.

And testing PCR at scale is too inefficient.

There's a need to have plastic around a banana: it spreads less good that smell it does to ripe other bananas around it, which 'modern' bananas do (they're send while green and ripe in grocery store). Whether that is a valid reason and how valid is a different debate.

Came here thinking they were able to fake a legit covid test. Instead they waste their time in one of these crappy rapid tests. Where I live no government body accepts results from these anyway, I'm not sure what's the point of faking a test that is already considered to be unreliable anyway.

You mean to tell me they reverse engineered the bluetooth communication of some obscure device when they could've just used a ballpoint pen to draw another line on that piece of paper?

I think that attacking the electronic component leaves behind less evidence of tampering with the device.

Stupid question: Why would someone want to fake a positive Covid test?

(I mean, I understand why someone would want to fake a negative test, and I can understand why someone would want to hack this device.)

Because they can, or to test security. Also, to get a certificate that they're cured from COVID-19, to avoid social gatherings such as avoiding showing up at work/family or to force work from home.

Kids getting themselves out of school seems to be the primary use case.

Possibly also adults getting themselves out of work, particularly if your employer offers lots of paid sick time for Covid.

Some people even want to CATCH covid to get recovery cert. For many people covid infection is quite mild with no symptoms.

Presumably you could fake a negative test just as easily as a positive test using the same method as the researchers. The researchers obviously were not covid-positive and thus had no choice but to fake a positive test for their research.

I think it is just a proof of concept. If you don't have covid you would have to infect yourself to fake a negative test. Faking a positive test proves that it is possible to fake a negative.

Why fake it? Just infect yourself with Omicron (which will probably happen to you anyway). It is mild, so no risk, plus it boosts your immunity better than the vaccine.

I have no idea how you'd go about doing that intentionally. It's not like there are scary vials labeled "Omicron" sitting on some shelf. In practice, it would look like the Midwest has looked for a year anyway.

In a few weeks it will be everywhere. It has crazy infection rate, look at super spreader event in Norway. I would just recommend to do periodic self tests not to "miss it". Reinfection may be hard.

This only works if you are an expert at playing Russian Roulette.

I can't find a citation now, but my understanding of why these test use bluetooth is that the FDA + CDC want to know how many people are testing positive. So the app has to report results to them.

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