RFID Passport Security Clarified
Not that it needed clarification. RFID passports have been a boondogle without a purpose for a long time. It’s been clear that they make us less secure. Now it turns out they can be easily cloned:
German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year.
The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery. But Lukas Grunwald, a security consultant with DN-Systems in Germany and an RFID expert, says the data in the chips is easy to copy.
For more, “Hackers Clone E-Passports” in Wired News, or our previous posts, “RFID Kills,” “Ed Felten On Passports” and “US Travel ID to have RFID Readable at 25 feet.”
“Cool Passport” photo by uther Pendragon.
Even more important is the work that the daring young men at Flexilis did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XXaqraF7pI which comes out of a worry from last year’s Black Hat conference. It’s the passport-controlled landmine. The current design fails here. They have improvements.