Walgreens, CVS beef up protections against threat of ‘bot’ attacks on vaccine program

Walgreens, CVS Health, Walmart, and other pharmacies are taking measures to prevent attacks by “scalper bots,” which are programmed to move ahead of others in line for products in limited supply—in this case slots for COVID-19 vaccinations. With the growth in online shopping during the coronavirus pandemic, scalper bots have broadened their horizons from gaming systems and high-end sneakers to include online grocery delivery slots, essential goods such as toilet paper and detergent, and items such as fitness equipment. The federal government says it will ship roughly 1 million coronavirus vaccine doses per week, starting on February 11, directly to approximately 6,500 pharmacies. Jim Cameli, Walgreens Boots Alliance’s chief information security Officer, said: “The Walgreens team is working to ensure only authorized and eligible patients will have access to schedule a vaccine appointment. To do so, security measures such as bot detection and prevention will play key roles in delivering this critical service to patients.” A spokesperson for CVS Health said the company’s “vaccination appointment site has a layered defense that includes capabilities to detect automated cyberattacks, such as botnets. Those capabilities, together with our application design and user input validation, enable us to validate legitimate users.” Walmart also said it plans to “focus on security and any necessary mitigation steps that help us provide fair and equitable vaccination sign-ups.”