A security bug in the 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.

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.

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 Tuesday and immediately contacted the company. Docket chief executive Michael Perretta said the bug was fixed at the server level a few hours later.

The bug was found in how the Docket app requests the user’s QR code from its servers. The user’s QR code is generated on the server in the form of a SMART Health Card, a widely accepted standard for validating a person’s vaccination status across the world. That QR code is tied to a user ID, which isn’t visible from the app, but can be viewed by looking at its network traffic using off-the-shelf 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. 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.

It’s not known 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.” 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 …….

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/27/docket-vaccine-records-covid-security/