But never mind him: worry about trust in COVID19 management, instead.

A few weeks ago, the world noticed that Italy was about to “bring in the strictest COVID-19 measures in Europe”. Starting on October 15th, that is, Italy “would become the first European country to require the so-called green pass - the digital or paper proof of vaccination, immunity or a negative test in the past 48 hours - in all places of work, both private and public."

This caused protests, a rise in Covid jab uptake and, absolutely unsurprising, something else too.

Dining with Adolf. Yes, THAT Adolf

Since yesterday, says Fanpage.it, it is possible to find online copies of valid Green Passes released to Adolf Hitler. Yes, that Adolf, even if the birth year was changed to 1900 (simply because, I believe, the verification software was not coded to handle previous centuries). So, if Hitler were still around, he would have problems, but not that of being denied entrance into italian businesses or public offices.

Where and what is the problem here?

On one hand, both Italians and foreign visitors are safe. It’s pretty unlikely that they will bump into Hitler in any public place in Italy. On the other, there are two classes of concrete problems here.

One is public health, and paradoxically it may be the smaller one: most places here do ask to show Green Passes, but almost none actually verifies that name and age on a Green Pass match the person who shows it. So yes, anybody infected could sneak without getting caught into many public spaces, with those cards.

That may not be a lot of people. The No-vax, no-green-pass crowd is a noisy but dwindling minority in Italy, not to mention that some of them are dumb enough to make Green Passes the last of their problems.

The main problems are that first, those fake passes are valid everywhere in Europe, not just Italy, and it seems similar passes are available in Poland and Russia. Second, there is almost the same thing I mentioned months ago.

If those passes are valid, it is either because someone authorized to issue Green Passes deliberately fed bogus data intoto the system, or because the system itself was cracked. That is the real problem. If someone managed to copy the cryptographic keys used to certify the data after they have entered the system, it means that the same people can alter any of those data, and then declare them valid:

If that were the case, it would mean that the whole system should be rebooted. Which, in turn, would mean that many, many thousands of vaccinated people, with long-term Green Passes, would find it not working anymore overnight, with little or no advice.

Like, someone planning their first vacation after 18 months, exactly because they had that pass, and then finding, at the gate, that they cannot board the plane to go back home. Or people getting the same treatment while showing off at a job they cannot afford to lose.

Take home lesson: never forget that, while no hackers must be left alone to design healthcare, ever, the best ones must always be consulted, to make digital healthcare management as safe as it could and should theoretically be.