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E-Passport Cloned In Five Minutes
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Dec 17, 2006 09:50 PM
from the if-more-proof-were-needed dept.
from the if-more-proof-were-needed dept.
Last month a panel of EU experts warned that the e-Passport's security is "poorly conceived", and in fact a week later a British newspaper demonstrated a crack. Now another researcher has shown how to
clone a European e-Passport in under 5 minutes. A UK Home Office spokesman dismissed it all, saying "It is hard to see why anyone would want to access the information on the chip."
Related Stories
[+]
IT: RFID Passport Security "Poorly Conceived" 33 comments
tonk writes, "European expert researchers on identity and identity management summarize their findings from an analysis of passports with RFID and biometrics — Machine Readable Travel Documents or MRTDs — and recommend corrective measures that 'need to be adopted by stakeholders in governments and industry to ameliorate outstanding issues... By failing to implement an appropriate security architecture, European governments have effectively forced citizens to adopt new international MTRDs which dramatically decrease their security and privacy and increases risk of identity theft. Simply put, the current implementation of the European passport utilizes technologies and standards that are poorly conceived for its purpose.' The European experts therefore come to similar conclusions as the Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee of the US Department of Homeland Security in a draft report, which seems to be delayed."
[+]
IT: British "Secure" Passports Cracked 305 comments
hard-to-get-a-nickna writes "The Guardian has cracked the so-trumpeted secure British passports after 48 hours of work:
'Three million Britons have been issued with the new hi-tech passport, designed to frustrate terrorists and fraudsters. So why did Steve Boggan and a friendly computer expert find it so easy to break the security codes?'"
[+]
Disabling the RFID in the New U.S. Passports? 294 comments
slashchuck writes "Along with the usual Jargonwatch and Wired/Tired articles, the January issue of Wired offers a drastic method for taking care of that RFID chip in your passport. They say it's legal ... if a bit blunt. From the article: 'The best approach? Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a blunt, hard object should disable it. A nonworking RFID doesn't invalidate the passport, so you can still use it.' While this seems a bit extreme, all indications seem to be these chips aren't very secure. How far will you go to protect or disable the RFID chip in your passport? Do you think such a step is necessary? Does anyone have an argument in favor of the technology's implementation here? "
[+]
Technology: RFID Passports Cloned Without Opening the Package 168 comments
Jeremy writes to tell us that using some simple deduction, a security consultant discovered how to clone a passport as it's being mailed to its recipient, without ever opening the package. "But the key in this first generation of biometric passport is relatively easy to identify/crack. It is not random, but consists of passport number, the passport holder's date of birth and the passport expiry date. The Mail found it relatively easy to identify the holder's date of birth, while the expiry date is 10 years from the issue date, which for a newly-delivered passport would clearly fall within a few days. The passport number consists of a number of predictable elements, including an identifier for the issuing office, so effectively a significant part of the key can be reconstructed from the envelope and its address label."
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Well then, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well then, (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Well then, (Score:5, Insightful)
Stronger than that, the data on the chip is digitally signed, so even if you can tracelessly replace the chip in the passport with a different one that has the photo you want, you're not going to be able to generate the appropriate digital signature for the altered data. This technology makes the passports effectively unalterable, as long as the chip is intact.
Not exactly. To read the passport data you have to have the authentication key. To get the authentication key, you need to have the passport, because the data that the key is derived from is printed inside. Note, however, that it has been shown that a large enough portion of the printed data is guessable, given basic information like the passport holder's name and a guess at his or her age, that the rest can be brute-forced pretty quickly. So there *is* a possibility it could be read without the owner's knowledge, but it's not completely trivial and does require some additional information.
The US has addressed this issue by putting a shielding mesh in the passport cover, which isolates the chip when the cover is closed.
Parent
Tin foil hats, everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Yes, but not co-ordinated like this (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, governments have databases about the citizens of their countries, for tax purposes, medical purposes, driver licensing and so on. That in itself is not unreasonable, as long as the data collected is necessary for the purpose, properly and securely handled, with suitable checks made on those with access to it and confidentiality maintained.
The National Identity Register in the UK, however, will combine most of the existing government databases into a single, centralised point of failure. In practice, it will likely be the case that most government departments and many outside agencies will have access to all of the records about an individual, not just those they have reason to see.
A second major concern is that the NIR will track every time it is checked. That won't help with the identity theft problem that follows from the above, unless the security of access is near-perfect across many thousands of people with access to the database. It will, however, mean that once the national ID card becomes the "easy option" for identity verification, the government has a handy record of each citizen's entire life: where they shop, which financial services they've been using, jobs they've been applying for, where they've travelled and who with, etc. There is simply no need for any state organisation to keep this sort of information about any citizen, other than when conducting legitimate surveillance of a suspect for genuine security purposes, with independent oversight.
Identity thieves, however, already happy to be part of the fastest-growing and most profitable crime wave in recent history, have hit the jackpot. Just along the Slashdot front page from this story as I write this, there is another article estimating that 100 million personal information leaks have occurred within the past couple of years or so. If that combination isn't reason enough to stop the NIR plans right now, I don't know what kind of sanity prevails in the government's universe.
Parent
Re:Well then, (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like it is hard to see why anyone would want to blow up an aircraft? I think that people are still thinking within the sandbox and not realising that the real risk is what we have not yet thought of. There will be lots of reasons to want to access the information and to change it or learn to create false IDs that Joe Average security assumes to be valid because it is state of the art.
Parent
Re:Well then, (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a common failure that occurs in these scenarios.
As part of my research on driver's licensing issues, when states added photos to driver's licenses (starting in the late 60's) the word "fraud" never entered the picture. Driver's licenses were essentially fraud free documents before the photographs were added--so it really never entered anyone's mind that things would change once the document became more powerful/useful/trusted.
Parent
Re:Well then, (Score:5, Insightful)
Passport cloning isn't even the primary security concern here. Cloning a passport has become no harder or easier thanks to RFID. But Identity theft will become much much easier.
Parent
Re:Can I zap it? (Score:5, Interesting)
You make the invalid assumption that people at immigration desks are reasonable people - they are *not*. Some of them are little Hitlers with bad attitude, and the ones who aren't have their hands tied by the law - they have no discretion at all. If the law says you can't enter without a working chip, the immigration officer (even the world's friendliest and most reasonable one) has no choice but to deport you. Just as they would deport you if your passport photo was mutilated.
(I'll make one exception for the little Hitlers - one notable aberration is Houston's immigration desks - those people are polite and make you feel welcome to the United States - truly refreshing to get to an immigration desk where it isn't just stony faces and demands to see that you have a return plane ticket. I frequently travel through Houston and they've always had good people there. Dallas Ft.Worth on the other hand - I will never travel through that airport again).
Parent
Re:Then why put it on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Something is just wrong with the UK's Home Office. Today I read that they will now classify panty theifs as sex offenders [sundaymirror.co.uk], receiving the same long-term classification on the sex offenders' registry as child abusers, rapists, and child pornographers.
Re:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:5, Funny)
Thank God stealing a bra is still ok...I was worried for a second there.
Parent
Re:and if your name is written on said panties (Score:5, Funny)
ob Simpsons:
Skinner: Oh, it's a miracle no one was hurt.
Otto: I stand on my record - fifteen crashes and not a single fatality!
Lou: Let's see your license, pal.
Otto: No can do. Never got one. But, if you need proof of my identity, I wrote my name on my underwear... Oh wait, these aren't mine!
Skinner: Well that tears it! Until you get a license and wear your own underwear, mister, you are suspended without pay!
Parent
Re:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only a tiny fraction of the people who are being branded second class citizens for life, and being subjected to a lifetime of harrasment and violence at the hands of vigilantes, did anything remotely like rape or molestation. Most commited only voluntary, consentual sex acts with people their own age.
Sex offender lists, and their sister paranoia law enforcement, Do Not Fly list, are part of our societies current irrational, paranoid, fear of boogie men - being afraid of sex offenders or terrorists depending on where you live and your political beliefs. Personally, I am far more disturbed by the people who believe their friends or neighbors are all devious sexual preditors lurking to rape their kids - If anything I would be far more worried about the guy who is constantly paranoid of sex offenders (ala Mark Foley), than I would the college football players who get arrested doing a panty raid on the girls sorority. Or I would be far more frightened of the people who think everyone named "Mohammed" may be a terrorist, than I would be of someone named "Mohammed" sitting next to me on a plane.
Maybe read Author Miller's "The Crucible" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible [wikipedia.org] ) to get a good idea of the sort of Moral Panic ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic [wikipedia.org] ) our society is in today.
Parent
In other news, bureaucrats develop sentience (Score:5, Insightful)
into place will steadfastly deny that anything is wrong until they are forced to do so, as agreeing that those are
potentially high security risks would otherwise equate it with having to backtrack on what they previously approved,
even though they were amply forewarned by many in the security-related field.
It's really about not losing face at any cost, lest people start questioning other methods they employ.
Human nature, really. Look no further than the voting machines controversy for parallels here in the US.
Z.
At least they can publish this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks to a software he himself has developed, called RFdump, he downloads the passport's data onto his computer and then onto a blank chip.
How long would it take for some 3 letter agency to show up at their door in the US?
Open Rights Group - Biometric passport (Score:5, Informative)
huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
If no one would want to access that information, then why is it on the chip? Why even bother with the chip? Why even bother with the information?
The Solution is Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
The proper response is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The proper response to that spokesman is "Well then, you won't mind lending us your passport for a minute, so we can copy it and put copies on sale in <district with notorious reputation>, will you?".
Some politicians simply need the problem made their personal problem before they'll see it.
Re:completely ignores the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Careful. The hippies used to complain about how all the old farts in power didn't have a clue back then. Now they're running things, and look where we are. I shudder to think about what the world will be like when it's YOUR turn...
Parent
RFID is absolutely TERRIBLE for security (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is claiming that magnetic stripes and/or bar codes are bad for security. In both cases they make it very marginally harder to copy and virtually eliminate data-entry errors. RFID has a BIG problem beyond that: It can be read without the knowledge of the holder.
No one can read the inside of my paper passport without me giving it to them - nor my magstripe nor bar code. I have complete control over who sees it. Sure, I might be conned into showing someone, but they have to con me. RFID means that:
1. They can copy my information without me ever showing it to them.
2. They can READ my information without me ever showing them, allowing them to identify me from a distance.
3. Even with a perfectly random RFID system, they can identify your nationality from afar, which obviously may make you a target in some circumstances.
To be SAFE, an RFID system must have a) zero emissions in the closed state (eg a tested foil cover) AND b) No non-random information broadcast from the chip. (that is, a random passportID that is broadcast that has NO other information until you look it up in the appropriate database.)
"b" is necessary because "a" alone still allows someone nearby you to snoop whenever you have to show your passport somewhere.
Parent
Re:RFID is absolutely TERRIBLE for security (Score:4, Insightful)
- That person is carrying a passport
- Someone with a passport is probably a tourist
- A tourist would normally need to carry largish amounts of cash
- So lets mug them or double our prices.
If you're a tourist in another country, the LAST thing you would normally want to do is advertise that fact.
Parent
Re:RFID is absolutely TERRIBLE for security (Score:5, Funny)
Parent