Amid vaccine demands, fake certificates become industry

In March 2021, as the global deployment of COVID-19 vaccines began to accelerate, the number of announcements tripled to more than 1,200 with suppliers based in the United States and in European countries such as the United States. Spain, Germany, France and Russia. Prices for fake vaccine passports were $ 250 each, while false-negative COVID-19 test results cost just $ 25 each.

In our last report in August 2021, we shared that fake “vaccine passport” certificates were on sale for $ 100 to $ 120, with most sellers in European countries. Also for sale: EU digital COVID certificate, CDC and NHS COVID-19 vaccination cards and fake COVID-19 PCR tests. The number of ad groups and their sizes have grown one hundred percent since the start of 2021.

In August 2021, CPR saw the number of salespeople grow to approximately 1,000. Today, the number of salespeople has grown exponentially to 10,000 – a tenfold increase.

This is not the first time that researchers at Check Point Research have reported on this disturbing global trend. We have detected and tracked this growing “industry” since the pandemic outbreak in 2020. However, it appears that as the pandemic reaches new heights, this market continues to improve its capabilities, expand its reach. distribution and increase the number of your subscribers.

Today, our researchers have discovered new techniques that salespeople are using to sell more. For example, in Austria we found a Telegram bot that creates fake certificates for free. All you need to do is fill in the relevant details and a pdf file with all your complete data will be shared with you, as in the attached case a negative PCR test.

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Some recommendations to be vigilant:

• As a general rule: Genuine health certificates are not sold on the Internet. Anyone who offers to sell such a document on the Internet is clearly doing so illegally. We advise people not to interact with sellers who post in such groups or markets anywhere on the web.
• Each country should internally maintain a central repository for tests and people vaccinated, which can and should be shared securely between the competent authorized bodies in the country.
• All “green passes” and vaccination certificates must be securely managed and encrypted by the relevant official bodies in each country, along with a QR code that can be scanned for authentication.
• Countries should cooperate and share information regarding this data and create a secure repository with encryption keys to allow people to move around using only legitimate certifications and to detect counterfeits and counterfeits.