Health App Docket Exposes COVID-19 Vaccine Records
According to an Oct. 27 article from TechCrunch by Zack Whittaker, a security bug in health app Docket exposed the private information of residents vaccinated against COVID-19 in New Jersey and Utah, where the app received endorsements from state officials.
Whittaker reports that “Docket lets residents download and carry a digital copy of their immunizations by pulling their vaccination records from their state’s health authority. The digital copy has the same information as the COVID-19 paper card, but is digitally signed by the state to prevent forgeries. Docket is one of several so-called vaccine passports in the U.S., allowing residents to show their vaccination records—or a scannable QR code—for getting into events, restaurants or crossing into countries where vaccines are required.”
That said, “But for a time, the app allowed anyone access to the QR codes of other vaccinated users—and all the personal and vaccine information encoded within. That included names, dates of birth and information about a person’s COVID-19 vaccination status, such as which type of vaccine they received and when.”
TechCrunch discovered the bug on Oct. 26 and contacted the company. Docket chief executive Michael Perretta said the bug was fixed at the server level a few hours later.
Whittaker explains that the bug was found in how the Docket app requests the user’s QR code from its servers. The QR code is generated on the server in the form of a SMART Health Card—a commonly accepted standard for validating an individual’s vaccination status. The QR code is linked to a user ID, not visible from the app, but can be seen by looking at its network traffic using software like Burp Suite or Charles Proxy.
“But Docket’s servers weren’t checking to make sure the person requesting a QR code was allowed to request it,” Whittaker writes. “That meant it was possible for any app user to change their user ID and request someone else’s QR code. Worse, Docket user IDs are sequential, and so new QR codes could be enumerated simply by changing the user ID by a single digit.”
Whittaker says that he didn’t know if anyone else discovered the bug. “Perretta said the company is ‘currently in the process of reviewing logs to determine if there was any malicious activity on the platform,’” he writes.” “Perretta also said that the company was working to inform state governments about the lapse but did not say if the company planned to notify its users of the security lapse.”
Nancy Kearney, a spokesperson for New Jersey’s Department of Health, was quoted in the article saying that “The New Jersey Department of Health was notified by our vendor, Docket, of a code vulnerability related to the recent release of a QR code associated with the app. Docket assured the Department that they identified and fixed the vulnerability within the code. No other functionality of the app was affected. The privacy and security of Docket users remains paramount. At this time, Docket is investigating for any indication of potential records that could have been compromised. The Department continues to work with Docket to ensure their ongoing vigilance on this matter.”
Whittaker concludes that “Docket isn’t the only vaccine passport app maker that’s faced security issues. The bug found in the Docket app is a nearly identical issue found in an app called Aura, which exposed thousands of QR codes containing the vaccination status of staff and students. And earlier this year, the Calgary-based proof-of-vaccination app Portpass exposed the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people after leaving its website unsecured, while one hacker was able to create an entirely fake vaccine passport using Quebec’s official proof-of-vaccination app.”
