U.S. Passport RFID Already Hacked
Tue Oct 31, 2006 3:36AM EST
See Comments (3)
Well that didn't take long. It's been roughly a whole month since the U.S. has been issuing passports with RFID chips in them, and already they've been hacked. In theory, at least.
The hack was released late last week and is now making the rounds. For a first stab at a hack, it is still on the limited side and is nothing to panic too heavily over. The hacker needs certain "seed" information in order to read all the data on the passport, including: Your passport number, your date of birth, and the date the passport expires. Using that information, anyone can obtain some of the digitally encoded data on the passport, including the digital image of your face and some personal information (it's not clear exactly what).
At first glance this doesn't sound so bad: Obtaining someone's date of birth is easy, but their passport and expiration date much less so. Still, all a hacker needs is a quick photo of that info or, more realistically, a simple method to intelligently brute-force-attack the passport in order to get the data.
More importantly, though, this is just the first passport crack in what will undoubtedly be a long line of them, culminating with a one-click method to crack any passport there is. For now, there's just the one: RFIDIOt, and the code is online for all to see. Hang in there, folks. Happy Halloween.
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2 Posted by trich991 on Mon Dec 4, 2006 1:10PM EST Report Abuse
The point is that the passport chip is wholly unnecessary for national security and had it been in place before 9/11 it would not have prevented the hi-jackings. Fifteen hi-jackers were ALLOWED in despite their deficient visa applications, in what amounts to criminal negligence. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID43/5201.html. We now face the passport chip and the National ID card, scheduled for rollout in 2008, just moving along towards American gulags, rendition, and torture for American citizens who, like peace activists, have already been identified as "potentially violent" by Department of Defense programs, such as TALON (Threat and Local Obervation Network) Hey, we are told the hijackers in 9/11 used their passports, not fake US passports! And what good is unfakeable passports if you don't need one to cross the border by land, underground, by water or air along the many thousands of open border and shoreline! Yes, the same people who failed to protect us, the same legislators who failed to oversee them, and the same populace who remains convinced that there is real choice every election cycle, are content with yet another program, just hoping that this one will keep us safe! We don't want no NATIONAL ID!
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3 Posted by vnielson14 on Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:15PM EDT Report Abuse
Mr. Null, you really should have done your homework. The so-called hack you refer to is nothing of the sort. Its making use of the chip as outlined by ICAO (the organization responsible for the passport specification that most countries use). This specification is public information which is good. It allows a border agent from the EU, the US, or anywhere else to inspect a passport with a chip. You can inspect your own if you have the right tools. Adding the chip makes it more difficult to produce fraudulent passports. Having access to the data on the chip is no different than having the passport itself. Calling this a hack is just more media sensationalism and misinformation from an industry that won't understand facts that don't make for a good story.
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1 Posted by scarmig on Wed Nov 1, 2006 7:48AM EST Report Abuse
The security on the passport isn't designed to protect privacy at all. It is designed so that the reader can authenticate the passport data and chip have not been tampered with. Privacy was never the intent.