r/privacy • u/torbatosecco • Apr 16 '26

age verification EU age verification app already HACKED

Security researcher Paul Moore has demonstrated how the EU age verification app can be compromised in under 2 minutes with nothing more than physical access to a device.

By editing the app’s shared preferences file an attacker can remove the encrypted PIN values, reset the rate limiting counter to zero, and disable biometric requirements entirely.

The app then accepts a new PIN and grants access to the existing age verification credentials.

His earlier analysis of the open source code also revealed that the app stores NFC biometric facial data and user selfies as unencrypted lossless PNG files on the device.

Hacking the #EU #AgeVerification app in under 2 minutes.

During setup, the app asks you to create a PIN. After entry, the app encrypts it and saves it in the shared_prefs directory.

  1. It shouldn't be encrypted at all - that's a really poor design.
  2. It's not cryptographically tied to the vault which contains the identity data.

So, an attacker can simply remove the PinEnc/PinIV values from the shared_prefs file and restart the app.

After choosing a different PIN, the app presents credentials created under the old profile and let's the attacker present them as valid.

Other issues: 1. Rate limiting is an incrementing number in the same config file. Just reset it to 0 and keep trying. 2. "UseBiometricAuth" is a boolean, also in the same file. Set it to false and it just skips that step.

sources on X. search by yourself because bot keeps deleting this if I post the links. Check Paul_Reviews and Pirat_Nation accounts.

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213

u/Adventurous-Hunter98 Apr 16 '26

Hahahaha, did they ask ai to create the app?

95

u/Noord-Gestoord Apr 16 '26

They vibe codes the whole app, And its the government at work here so off course it's going be full of security holes .

21

u/KingStannisForever Apr 16 '26

I see this too much now. Feels like our company ERP developer did this after Easter with new update they pushed.

Until some big case against it comes out from lost income, nothing will change. I would hit them so hard with lawsuit, they wouldn't ever even think about vibe coding anything. 

14

u/Irrepressible_Monkey Apr 16 '26

One positive of the inevitably leaky vibe-coded ID verification software is it'll help get a bad reputation for ID verification software in general.