Izvestia: Fraudsters Use Fake QR Codes for Phishing with this document. Sergey Golovanov, the chief expert of Kaspersky Lab, told Izvestia about this.
According to him, Russia began selling codes that lead to phishing pages that imitate official resources. The purchase of real codes of vaccinated Russians has also spread on the black market.
Experts warned that the purchase of a fake certificate entails criminal liability (part 3 of Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), with a punishment of up to one year in prison. At the same time, the use of someone else's or fake QR code is still not a punishable act due to gaps in the legislation.
However, lawyer Yulia Kremer noted, if the QR code contains a hyperlink to a vaccination certificate with a number, date of birth and the date of vaccination, such a code will be considered an official document, and its falsification also falls under the relevant article of the Criminal Code. If, after clicking on the QR code, such data is not found, then there will be no grounds for accusation of document forgery.
Earlier it was reported that the demand for obtaining certificates of vaccination in Russia has grown, as well as the number of scammers who profit from anti-vaccinations. Sellers offer to get an illegal document and issue a QR code on State Services. In particular, hundreds of channels began to appear on Telegram, where scammers sell an “officially registered” QR code. This service costs from 4 to 6 thousand rubles. For two thousand rubles, sellers offer PCR tests, which will supposedly be taken into account in the databases of medical clinics, and a fake vaccination withdrawal from them can be bought for 3 thousand.
Prior to this, Olga Daineko, expert of the Financial Literacy Center of the NFI of the Ministry of Finance of Russia reported that scammers began to deceive Russians, offering to do a free PCR test for coronavirus. According to her, the personal data of citizens is of no less interest to fraudsters than money. “The situation with the coronavirus, quarantine, restrictions and changes in legislation – all this is fertile ground for new scenarios of fraudsters,” said an employee of the center.