E-Passport Cloned In Five Minutes 259
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."
Well then, (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Well then, (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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?
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...
and at best you'll end up with thousands (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:completely ignores the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the key needs to be printed somewhere on the passport.
The big, huge security hole though, is that the key is made up of the passport number, the date of birth of the holder, and the expiry date, none of which are hard to come by. For example, the postman delivering your new passport can probably find your date of birth (when did you late get a birthday card?), and can make a pretty good guess as to when it expires (10 years plus or minus a few days), so if he can guess what the passport number is, then he can read and clone your passport without even opening the envelope!
I don't know what idiot dreamed up using that particular data as the 'secret' key, they deserve to be shot. Why not make the key some random digit string, printed inside the passport in machine-readable text? Then it would at least be impossible to read the passport without opening it.
why indeed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't know where you live, but I trust the police here about as far as I can throw them. I'll accept that most police are probably perfectly trustworthy as individuals, but it doesn't take many bad seeds to make the whole group untrustworthy. You just don't know if you're getting one of the 90 good ones, or one of the 10 lemons.
Based on the "thin blue line" good 'ole boys club that protects police from being held accountable for anything from traffic violations to premeditated murder, and the number of flagrant abuses of power by police that appear in reputable news sources, I don't trust policemen. Even if 90% of them are trustworthy as individuals, when they protect criminals in uniform they are no longer trustworthy as a group.
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.
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.
Or maybe there should be no database? (Score:1, Insightful)
Passports and other pieces of identification never bring a nation security or safety. The best way to remain safe is to avoid alienating those who could bring you harm. And yes, that means staying out of the affairs of regions on the other side of the world.
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:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Then why put it on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Says who? You? Heck, why don't we start arresting people for thought crimes, then?
In a nation of laws, people get punished for what they actually do, not for some prediction of what they might or might not do in the future. Apparently, you prefer to live in a totalitarian nation, in which the state can charge anybody with absolutely anything if they just so please.
Re:completely ignores the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Off the top of my head (might be missing something obvious), by forcing the key to be made up of useful data, it becomes impossible to divorce the key from the holder's identifying information, as printed on the passport. By requiring the operator to enter the user's data as part of the key to decode the electronic data, it sort of requires that the printed data match the electronic data. Without this check, the operator would have to visually compare the two, which might make it slightly easier to attempt low-tech forgeries where the information doesn't actually match.
Of course, even if that were one of their reasons behind the design, that wouldn't excuse them from not mixing the passport holder's data with a random number in the manner you suggest.
Re:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:1, Insightful)
In closing, take your smug 'you don't know, you're just guessing' and learn what the burden of proof fallacy is and why it is a fallacy [google.com].
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.
Tin foil hats, everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:2, Insightful)
Some people might just like to be steal people's underwear, because they think it's a funny thing to do. (Though of course, yes, there are some people who... really like underwear.)
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.
Re:Well then, (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. It's pretty good security. It does have one flaw, that there's not enough entropy in the MRID (the info printed on the inside that is needed to authenticate to the chip) which makes brute force searches too easy, but if that flaw were fixed, I would call it very good security.
Re:Was the Home Office spokesman an idiot? (Score:3, Insightful)
So someone who steals a magazine (or an online porn account) for the purpose of getting a sexual thrill should be classified as a sex offender?
Oh is it only because the victim felt violated? What if a mugger looks "strangely" at a lady after taking her purse and other valuables (ID, camera phone etc) but lets her go, and she feels violated? Should the mugger be classified as a sex offender too?
Or what if the mugger got a sexual thrill out of her photos?
Sure motive is important, but I think people should be a bit careful before they start creating the Ministry of Thoughtcrime.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Such ID numbers already exist (Score:4, Insightful)
Your birth certificate number could be read as CN.DN.cert-number. You have a social insurance number, social security number, or equivalent. You are numbered by your driver's license, your chequing account, your power bill, and a host of other unique identifiers.
I have no objection to SECURE identification. I object to wasting billions on useless crap.
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.
Re:Well then, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can I zap it? (Score:4, Insightful)
What will happen if my Electronic passport fails at a port-of-entry?
The chip in the passport is just one of the many security features of the new passport. If the chip fails, the passport remains a valid travel document until its expiration date. The bearer will continue to processed by the port-of-entry officer as if he/she had a passport without a chip.