Pharmacies all over Germany have not been able to issue corona vaccination certificates since Wednesday.
The German Pharmacists Association (DAV) announced on Thursday that the issuing of certificates had been stopped in consultation with the Federal Ministry of Health.
When asked by the FAZ, a Frankfurt pharmacy confirmed that it was currently not possible to issue vaccination certificates due to technical problems.
The Handelsblatt had therefore succeeded "with the help of professionally forged documents" on the DAV server to generate guest access for a non-existent pharmacy owner, with which two vaccination certificates were then issued.
Therefore, the registered sites are currently being checked.
But so far there has been no evidence of other unauthorized access.
On request, the Handelsblatt announced that it was correct that the newspaper had discovered a serious security gap in the creation of digital vaccination certificates.
“However, the Handelsblatt itself did not gain access to the system;
two IT security specialists have disclosed the vulnerability and thus demonstrated that there are significant deficiencies in the portal, ”said a publisher's spokeswoman.
According to the DAV, it has not yet been determined when the pharmacies will be able to issue vaccination certificates again. However, it can be assumed that the more than 25 million vaccination certificates that have been issued so far all come from legally registered pharmacies.