Face and fingerprints swiped in Dutch biometric passport crack

"Dutch TV program Nieuwslicht (Newslight) is claiming that the security of the Dutch biometric passport has already been cracked. As the program reports here, the passport was read remotely and then the security cracked using flaws built into the system, whereupon all of the biometric data could be read."

Link to Face and fingerprints swiped in Dutch biometric passport crack | The Register

 
"Privacy activists in many countries question and protest the lack of information about exactly what the passports' chip will contain, and whether they impact civil liberties. The main problem they point out is that data on the passports can be transferred with touchless RFID technology (like wireless technology) which can become a major vulnerability. Although this would allow ID-check computers to obtain your information without a physical connection, it may also allow anyone with the necessary equipment to perform the same task. If the personal information and passport numbers on the chip aren't encrypted, the information might wind up in the wrong hands.

To protect against such unauthorized reading, or "skimming", in addition to employing encryption the U.S. has also undertaken the additional step of integrating a very thin metal mesh into the passport's cover to act as a shield to make it even more difficult (the State Department claims "nearly impossible" to read the passport's chip when the passport is closed. Research students from Vrije University in the Netherlands speaking at the August 2006 Black Hat conference in Las Vegas showed that RFID passports can be cloned relatively easily, and can be remotely spied upon despite the radio-blocking shields included in US designs. They found they could read the passports from 60 centimeters away if they are opened by just 1 cm, using a device which can be used to hijack radio signals that manufacturers have touted as unreadable by anything other than proprietary scanners." ^{From Wikipedia}

More at BBC: "Concern over biometric passports" and at Security in Society.

German group slams biometric passport data sale

"The organization heaped criticism on German parliamentarians, who have been debating whether to sell data access to private sector companies to help fund new passports." More here.

 

They are watching you!

Read 1984 by George Orwell. We live in a growing police state and his vision is closer than you think. More here.