How to read an Apple Wallet card?
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So, I know about Apple Pay, and this is NOT what I'm talking about.
With the advent of all the different certificates and verifications for vaccinations, one of these methods is via Apple Wallet, where they send you a pkpass file that essentially contains a signed certificate.You click it, it displays a fancy card image and walla, verified?
But the whole point is that you can approach an NFC reader and query that digital card for the certificate, yet in an hour of searching I can't find for the life of me anything that supports asking for an arbitrary "pass" and sending the info to some computer or whatever so it can be verified.
Am I just retarded or is my Google Fu failing me?
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As far as I can tell from the one in my wallet, it’s not an nfc enabled card but just a convenient place to store a qr code to scan. That’s from the nhs app though, other jurisdictions might be different
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@Jaloopa said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
As far as I can tell from the one in my wallet, it’s not an nfc enabled card but just a convenient place to store a qr code to scan. That’s from the nhs app though, other jurisdictions might be different
Right, we know about the QR codes for vax records, but apparently Australia is providing exclusively pkpass (apple wallet) cards, and the Apple Wallet App does not into the QR code at all. (spent half an hour back and forth with a guy who was concerned).
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@Jaloopa Apple Wallet does support cards that are read via NFC rather than by just displaying a barcode or QR code.
NFC how it's read though. I always assumed it was just used in a scenario you'd already be using an NFC reader and it virtualises the card.
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@Tsaukpaetra the Australia one looks like you just show it to someone? I think them calling it a digital certificate makes it sound more complicated than it is
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@loopback0 said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@Tsaukpaetra the Australia one looks like you just show it to someone? I think them calling it a digital certificate makes it sound more complicated than it is
Well how it gets on the phone is literally a specially formatted certificate, which in theory can be verified digitally. That's part of why they encourage usage for things like plane boarding passes, school ID, and now vaccination records I guess.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
, which in theory can be verified digitally.
Yes but it doesn't seem to be the case for the vaccination thing even in Australia.
@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
plane boarding passes
IME (and every result I found on a quick Google search) just a QR code, like an actual boarding pass.
The upcoming support for state ID and/or driving licenses seems to be based on ISO 18013-5 mDL if that helps?
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@loopback0 said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
just a QR code
Yeah, that's the normal (non Apple Wallet) method, which we support. But I went around the iPhone with this guy and couldn't get it to spit out a QR code.
Apple intends this to replace contactless cards, so it would be less than useless for a person with such a digital card to flash their iPhone to a reader and it does nothing because it's not a camera and thus can't see no card.
I guess I'll just have to buy an iPhone and start fucking with it myself. Maybe buy a Mac so I can sign up for their developer program and maybe get some real documentation.
I'm not holding my breath.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
maybe get some real documentation.
unhelpful response
As someone who supports an iOS app...
Apple's documentation is...sparse. And the meanings of those keys tend to change without mention between versions. For instance, the date component formatter (to turn things like a number of seconds into a HH:MM:SS without manual munging) has an option
.pad. Which is supposed to make it consistent, so everything is either 1 or two digits (padding at the start with zeros). Except on iOS 12, where hours end up not padded. But that key was introduced way back when. So if you want consistency, you have to test for the output and muck around.Basically, when I hear people complain about VS and .NET, I want to shake them and point to xCode and the various iOS frameworks and tell them "it could be worse. WAY worse."
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
Yeah, that's the normal (non Apple Wallet) method, which we support. But I went around the iPhone with this guy and couldn't get it to spit out a QR code.
Apple Wallet supports QR codes or barcodes oo.
If it's in Apple Wallet and it doesn't spit out a QR code then it's just been developed not to.I'm not sure where you've got the idea NFC is involved though, or where the Australian COVID app comes into it when you're in the US?
The app requires iOS 11 or later, but the additional features for ID/driving licenses only got introduced recently in iOS 15. It also suggests it works on devices which don't contain the U1 chip.Unless you actually mean this functionality?
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@Benjamin-Hall said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
Apple's documentation is...sparse.
And usually only written in terms of “click here in the App” which doesn't really help if the app has decided not to put that button there (let alone if you want to actually do something like building automatically in a CI pipeline!). Debugging that sort of thing is… very much not for the faint-of-heart. Also don't count on finding much help online: you'll probably find someone asking how to do it easily enough, but their question will be either totally unanswered, full of answers that obviously don't apply to anything from the past 10 years, or end up straight back and the pointy-clicky shit.
Fortunately, for almost everything I can just have standard Unix tools and that's what I need for my job.
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@dkf And the position of the buttons change from versions of xcode. Or are removed entirely in point updates. But I was mainly talking about the API documentation for the frameworks, which look like they were auto-generated. The discussion for
doThingis "does thing." and that's about it.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@dkf And the position of the buttons change from versions of xcode. Or are removed entirely in point updates. But I was mainly talking about the API documentation for the frameworks, which look like they were auto-generated. The discussion for
doThingis "does thing." and that's about it.My experience with supporting building open source programs for Apple is that virtually everyone who is actually able to navigate their documentation to make systems that actually work well, well they almost invariably end up getting hired by Apple themselves (who promptly tell their employees to not contribute a damn thing outside the company).
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@dkf said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
who promptly tell their employees to not contribute a damn thing outside the company
To reemphasise this, Apple are even more insular than Microsoft at their worst.
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@loopback0 said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
where the Australian COVID app comes into it when you're in the US?
This is for people not in the US coming in and the convention requiring digital proof of vaccination. I have no idea what the "Australian COVID app" is, but my guy was only able to produce a shitty screenshot of a card like so:
And that has no QR code so.....
@loopback0 said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
I'm not sure where you've got the idea NFC is involved though
Because that's how Apple Pay works?
Otherwise that digital record might as well be the same thing as my paper written-myself "Hur dur yeah of course I got poked" I made myself. Which defeats the purpose of, you know, digital verification?
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Ugh, and apparently
How businesses are expected to verify? Have the customer show them their phone screen and look for a fucking green checkmark.
What the hell.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
I have no idea what the "Australian COVID app" is, but my guy was only able to produce a shitty screenshot of a card like so:
I should have said COVID passport not COVID app. My bad.
@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
Because that's how Apple Pay works?
The non-payment stuff in Apple doesn't use NFC.
@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
Otherwise that digital record might as well be the same thing as my paper written-myself "Hur dur yeah of course I got poked" I made myself
Right. It is effectively the same.
If you don't have it on your phone's wallet you can download it as a PDF, and any idiot can generate a PDF.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
How businesses are expected to verify? Have the customer show them their phone screen and look for a fucking green checkmark.
What the hell.Exactly.
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@Jaloopa said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
As far as I can tell from the one in my wallet, it’s not an nfc enabled card but just a convenient place to store a qr code to scan. That’s from the nhs app though, other jurisdictions might be different
The QR code in question is actually for verification as it can be scanned using a special NHS app which validates it online.
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@loopback0 said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
Otherwise that digital record might as well be the same thing as my paper written-myself "Hur dur yeah of course I got poked" I made myself
Right. It is effectively the same.
If you don't have it on your phone's wallet you can download it as a PDF, and any idiot can generate a PDF.@loopback0 said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
How businesses are expected to verify? Have the customer show them their phone screen and look for a fucking green checkmark.
What the hell.Exactly.
Yeah. I reiterate: What the hell...
Richard managed to forge a COVID vaccine certificate. It took him 10 minutes
Near-perfect forgeries of the federal government's COVID-19 vaccine digital certificate can be made in 10 minutes using free software, a member of the public has discovered.
I mean, I'm all for security theater, but this is just retarded, not even pants-on-head retarded...
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@Tsaukpaetra Australian COVID thread is
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
I mean, I'm all for security theater, but this is just retarded, not even pants-on-head retarded...
As is often the case, the best solution is probably...don't. I'd recommend stepping back from the problem and asking why you're trying accomplish by doing this in the first place.
If it's just security theater, then yep, just visually inspect something and keep going. It's not like the American CDC cards would be difficult to fake. It's just some handwritten stuff on a piece of paper.
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@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
American CDC cards would be difficult to fake. It's just some handwritten stuff on a piece of paper.
Yup, and we're not accepting those.
In fact, the only paper we should ever see is if you have no phone and had to print out the QR code.
Also, apparently Australia is getting on the ball and doing the QR code thing, so it might just be a
anyways... 
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
American CDC cards would be difficult to fake. It's just some handwritten stuff on a piece of paper.
Yup, and we're not accepting those.
In fact, the only paper we should ever see is if you have no phone and had to print out the QR code.
Also, apparently Australia is getting on the ball and doing the QR code thing, so it might just be a
anyways... 
Are you doing a convention in Australia? What else could an American present but their CDC card?
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@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
American CDC cards would be difficult to fake. It's just some handwritten stuff on a piece of paper.
Yup, and we're not accepting those.
In fact, the only paper we should ever see is if you have no phone and had to print out the QR code.
Also, apparently Australia is getting on the ball and doing the QR code thing, so it might just be a
anyways... Are you doing a convention in Australia? What else could an American present but their CDC card?
Backwards. An Australian wants to come to America and are worried they'll be barred entry to the convention if they can't provide the QR code.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
American CDC cards would be difficult to fake. It's just some handwritten stuff on a piece of paper.
Yup, and we're not accepting those.
In fact, the only paper we should ever see is if you have no phone and had to print out the QR code.
Also, apparently Australia is getting on the ball and doing the QR code thing, so it might just be a
anyways... Are you doing a convention in Australia? What else could an American present but their CDC card?
Backwards. An Australian wants to come to America and are worried they'll be barred entry to the convention if they can't provide the QR code.
OK, so the Australian angle makes sense. But again...why wouldn't you accept a CDC card? What else is there?
I'll accept that there's raisins why you care in the first place. That's just the world we live in today.
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@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
But again...why wouldn't you accept a CDC card?
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
It's not like the American CDC cards would be difficult to fake. It's just some handwritten stuff on a piece of paper.
You already answered yourself.
The workflow here is:
- Scan QR code with badge info
- Scan QR code with vax info
- Green checkmark, here's your badge, move along.
Otherwise it's:
- Ask someone their name
- Get their ID
- Type in and find in the system
- haggle to get what they actually put into during registration
- inspect ID to match
- get CDC card
- compare CDC card with ID
- Hope they're not lying anyways
- Green checkmark, here's your badge, thanks for the extra 2 minutes of processing.
Just rather not be playing a live version of Papers Please, is all.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
But again...why wouldn't you accept a CDC card?
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
It's not like the American CDC cards would be difficult to fake. It's just some handwritten stuff on a piece of paper.
You already answered yourself.
The workflow here is:
- Scan QR code with badge info
- Scan QR code with vax info
- Green checkmark, here's your badge, move along.
I'm just confused as to where you're getting the "vax info" for Americans if you're not accepting the actual vax info that they'd have.
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@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
But again...why wouldn't you accept a CDC card?
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
It's not like the American CDC cards would be difficult to fake. It's just some handwritten stuff on a piece of paper.
You already answered yourself.
The workflow here is:
- Scan QR code with badge info
- Scan QR code with vax info
- Green checkmark, here's your badge, move along.
I'm just confused as to where you're getting the "vax info" for Americans if you're not accepting the actual vax info that they'd have.
You may not have been paying attention here, but there's this nifty thing called a QR code that contains information that can be signed by a trusted authority, eliminates typos (assuming the issuer did their proper needful) and isn't easily faked.
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@Tsaukpaetra huh. I had never heard of this being a thing here.
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@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@Tsaukpaetra huh. I had never heard of this being a thing here.
Yeah it's a thing in CA (the convention's home base), and spreading rapidly (for given values of rapid and spread).
The whole thing leading up to why the con is even requiring the digital proofs is one of the leads (who happens to be a bouncer) was all "Yeah, we get people with fake cards all the time. They go
when we kick them because their card doesn't even match their fake ID"Actually I think that was in the news. I think, in the other direction (real card with fake ID), but the idea is the same.
Young Drinkers Are Pissed Their Fake IDs Don’t Match Their Real Vaccine Cards
These are tough times for underage drinkers seeking to drink illegally: the birthdays listed on vaccine cards, which are required to enter some bars, do not match their fake IDs.
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@Tsaukpaetra well, yeah. I posted that article somewhere, actually.
Yeah it's a thing in CA (the convention's home base), and spreading rapidly (for given values of rapid and spread).
I'm sorry. At this point it's obvious that the people interested in keeping the unvaccinated out haven't been paying attention, but, again, that's neither here nor there for your purpose.
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@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@Tsaukpaetra well, yeah. I posted that article somewhere, actually.
Yeah it's a thing in CA (the convention's home base), and spreading rapidly (for given values of rapid and spread).
I'm sorry. At this point it's obvious that the people interested in keeping the unvaccinated out haven't been paying attention, but, again, that's neither here nor there for your purpose.
Yeah, not my place to care, just my job to get 'er done.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
Yeah it's a thing in CA (the convention's home base), and spreading rapidly
Just like a disease.
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@HardwareGeek said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
Yeah it's a thing in CA (the convention's home base), and spreading rapidly
Just like a disease.
It's a contest to see who gets the most people first!
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@Tsaukpaetra said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
@boomzilla said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
American CDC cards would be difficult to fake. It's just some handwritten stuff on a piece of paper.
Yup, and we're not accepting those.
In fact, the only paper we should ever see is if you have no phone and had to print out the QR code.
Also, apparently Australia is getting on the ball and doing the QR code thing, so it might just be a
anyways... The problem with the QR codes (in NL) is that what really should be a document stating "@Tsaukpaetra has been vaccinated" ends up actually saying "The bearer of this document is vaccinated". It's not even that nobody does the accompanying identity check. It's that it's not even possible to do the accompanying identity check.
And that's with us having had NFC-enabled passports and driving licenses for at least a decade now. You even need to use one of those to activate the app that shows your QR code.
But there's no ID check with the QR code check and now there's a huge problem of people using copies of other people's QR codes.
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@PleegWat said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
But there's no ID check with the QR code check and now there's a huge problem of people using copies of other people's QR codes.
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@PleegWat said in How to read an Apple Wallet card?:
But there's no ID check with the QR code check and now there's a huge problem of people using copies of other people's QR codes.
Same here (no surprise, it's likely same in most EU countries that have a common scheme now). The name is written next to the QR code, but nobody ever checks that (i.e. asks for an ID that matches).
I wouldn't say it's a "huge" problem, but it does make for some fun stories. For example Macron's QR code was "leaked" some time ago, so reportedly some people use it for fun.
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@remi True, the bigger problem that caused the big spike here last summer was relaxing the rules too quickly and the 'Dancing with Johnson' campaign, where people were encouraged to get a single-dose Johnson vaccine which allowed them to go partying without tests or other restrictions that same night.
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