Ontario should prevent the 'hack' that hit Quebec's vaccine passport app, expert warns
Ontario’s vaccine passport app should learn from an episode in Quebec where some people created their own QR codes and spoofed the identity of several Quebec politicians, says a Toronto cybersecurity expert.
Quebec’s government has complained to police about so-called hackers who were able to appear to obtain the QR codes of Quebec leaders -- including Premier Francois Legault -- something that should be avoided here, says Claudiu Popa.
“I like QR codes as much as anybody else. You can flash them and scan them on the fly. But they should be only used to transfer and communicate secure information and the best way to protect confidentiality is to use encryption,” he said.
Quebec has defended its system, saying the alleged breach exploited a small vulnerability that is being fixed.
“It’s a really precise loophole that is being corrected right away,” Eric Caire, Quebec’s minister for government digital transformation, told CTV Montreal last week.
“We will think about it if it’s a good idea to put more obstacles in the system, more constraints,” he said.
QR codes are short for “quick response” codes and are often used to store a string of characters such as a website or some names and dates in a speedy, machine-readable format.
In Quebec, the QR codes contain a person’s name, date of birth, and information about the vaccinations they have received.
Those codes are a central feature of the Quebec government’s vaccine passport system, which launched on Wednesday.
It appears the so-called hackers were able to obtain publicly available information such as the name and the birthdate, and used whether the politician had already disclosed his or her vaccination status.
Then it appears the person made their own QR code, which could be read by the vaccine passport app.
In Ontario, the vaccine passport will first be a printed or shown vaccine receipt, and an app is scheduled to come in only on October 22.
Ontario’s Associate Minister of Digital Government Kaleed Rasheed told a news conference that the government is aware of the issue in Quebec.
“The provincially designed app is going to be very secure and privacy protected,” he said.
If the QR code displayed by a customer contains an encrypted code which only the QR reader can decode, the app would be more secure, Popa said.
He also advised that people should not flash around their QR codes, and keep them private as they would with a credit card or a drivers’ licence.
“We have so many tools that could scan QR codes from a distance,” he said.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
For the first time in report's history, Canada's air quality worse than U.S.
Air quality in Canada is now worse than in the U.S., according to the 6th Annual World Air Quality Report. Of the 15 most polluted cities in the two countries, 14 were in Canada.
A newspaper says video of Prince William and Kate should halt royal rumour mill. That's a tall order
Prince William and his wife Catherine have been filmed at a farm shop near their Windsor home, The Sun newspaper reported -- the first footage of Kate since she had abdominal surgery for an unspecified condition two months ago.
WATCH LIVE As former prime minister Mulroney lies in state, public tributes in Ottawa begin
Members of the public who wish to pay tribute to Brian Mulroney can visit his casket in Ottawa starting this afternoon.
BREAKING Roy McMurtry, former Ontario attorney general, dies at 91
CTV News has confirmed that former Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry has died.
Hertz CEO out following electric car 'horror show'
The company, which announced in January it was selling 20,000 of the electric vehicles in its fleet, or about a third of the EVs it owned, is now replacing the CEO who helped build up that fleet, giving it the company’s fifth boss in just four years.
'You ask for your money, they disappear': Ontario man loses $17K to AI crypto scam
A Toronto man is spreading the word of a cryptocurrency scam that lures victims using AI-generated news sites after he lost $17,000 in investments.
DEVELOPING Canada's annual inflation rate ticked down to 2.8 per cent in February, defying expectations
Statistics Canada says the annual inflation rate edged down to 2.8 per cent in February.
High thoughts: The habits of Canadian cannabis users are revealed in a new StatCan report
Statistics Canada has conducted a series of surveys to measure the impacts of legalized cannabis since the Cannabis Act took effect in 2018. The latest one, the 2023 National Cannabis Survey, sheds light on users' preferences and habits last year.
Demand soars for solar eclipse glasses in Canada. Are they worth buying?
The demand for total solar eclipse glasses used to safely view the rare celestial event has been ramping up as sellers, along with astronomy and eye-care experts in Canada, warn that viewing the eclipse with the naked eye is dangerous.