US to go ahead with e-passports

[formercia]

despite security flaws exposed.

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/285

Infineon to provide U.S. e-passport chips
Published: 2006-08-21

The U.S. government is going forward with the public deployment of its electronic passport, ordering millions of the wireless chips from semiconductor firm Infineon to place in the back cover of the nation's travel document, the German company announced on Monday.
--snip--

The electronic passport has been the focus of controversy, with many privacy activists and security experts worried over the possibility that identity thieves and terrorists could read the data on the passport from a distance. The U.S. has instituted countermeasures, including shielding inside the front cover of the document and using a basic encryption scheme to protect the data. Yet, at the latest Black Hat Briefings security conference, a German researchers showed how someone could read the data out from a passport and clone the functions of the digital document using a smart-card chip. The Smart Card Alliance, an industry group, dismissed the significance of the finding.

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. If I get one ot these, I'll microwave it

And maybe use a meat tenderizer on it too. They can read the fucking thing if they want to know what's in it...

:evilgrin:



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[Kutjara]

3. More proof that the whole security infrastructure...

...has nothing to do with preventing terrorism and everything to do with social control. Our government doesn't give a damn if we're blown to kingdom come, just as long as they can read our ID at a distance and track the movements of dissidents and other 'undesirables.'

Never mind that these passports will be readable with a handheld scanner by anyone with a basic grasp of the technology, so terrorists around the world can pick out the American tourists by pointing an RFID receiver at people in the street and waiting for a 'hit.' We may as well all paint a great big target on our foreheads.

[aquart]

5. Go with that talking point: it makes us targets for terrorists.

Say it everywhere.

[Kutjara]

4. Self delete: duplicate

[formercia]

10. How to fry a RFID tag:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/022904rfidtagsexplode.html

[Richard Steele]

2. Billions wasted for ZERO security.

Fakes will be on the street before the real ones are;
these things have already been compromised.
A few hundred dollars in equipment will let
any black-marketeer crank out phonies equal
in quality to the real ones.

And our security personnel's VIGILANCE will relax
even more, on assurances that these passports are
somehow USEFUL for security purposes.

Does anyone remember when we were told how
bank cards were going to make THEFT a thing
of the past? How well did that work out?

[mmonk]

6. Well I'm going to get my passport now

before this crap is in place.

[ima_sinnic]

8. you beat me to it! I am sitting here planning it as I write

-- still have 5 years on my current passport, but I can gain another 5 chip-free years if I act now.

[liberal N proud]

7. So who in the bu$h regime owns stock in Infineon?

There is something to be made here for someone in the regime.

[MagickMuffin]

9. More info: ;-P

How skimming works
The equipment needed to skim an RFID chip neither has to be large nor expensive. Nokia sells cell phones capable of reading RFID chips. Texas Instruments sells kits to do the same thing.

In May, researchers at the University of Tel Aviv created a skimmer from electronics hobbyist kits costing less than $110. The equipment was small enough to fit into a briefcase or be disguised in any manner of luggage or clothes that could hide the 15-inch copper tube antenna.

The antenna boosts the read-range from a few inches to a few feet. To extend the range of surreptitious access much further, a second piece of equipment is needed to fake the RFID reader into sending a "read" signal, which is then relayed via radio waves to the skimmer's reader near the targeted RFID chip.

In 2005, a researcher at Cambridge extended the range to about 160 feet while successfully accessing a contactless smart card's details.

ID thieves who figure out a way around the security precaution on RFID passports, which includes anti-skimming material in the cover, can use this method in a crowded airport terminal or hotel lobby to conceivably "borrow" someone's ID data and spoof it to another official reader, effectively cloaking themselves in another's persons ID.

Or they could learn a person's nationality, or confirm the identity of someone they were searching for to harm.

"It's a great way for unfriendly elements to set up their own RFID scanning systems and pick Americans right out of a crowd...If you put an RFID scanner in a doorway or maybe a lamp-post," said Sterling, "you can just sit there automatically counting the passing passports."

Even if the skimmed data is encrypted -- as e-Passport information would be -- skilled hackers could potentially save the information and crack it elsewhere.

Researchers at the Dutch security test lab Riscure cracked the encryption on a mocked up RFID passport in two hours using a PC in 2005.


http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/13/pf/rfid_passports/

When are they planning on doing this?

The above article stated it was planned for late August, then I read it would be planned for October.:shrug: