techdirt.com — There's been an odd rush by governments to move to RFID passports, even though there are serious concerns about how secure they really are. Over in the UK, where many RFID passports are already in use, a security researcher and a reporter were able to crack some aspects of the passport.
Nov 19, 2006 View in Crawl 4
funkywitdasystmNov 19, 2006
well, we all saw this coming...
miglaughNov 20, 2006
Is this news? I thought this was already on the frontpage before.<a class="user" href="http://www.digg.com/tech_news/3_Million_Secure_Passports_Cracked">http://www.digg.com/tech_news/3_Million_Secure_Passports_Cracked</a>
Closed AccountNov 20, 2006
I already put mine in the microwave. Apparently, that fixes most of the bugs.
dreamlayersNov 20, 2006
Why do they call this "cracked"? The key is composed of several things printed inside the passport and they just used that key to access the passport. It's not like anybody can just instantly access any passport without that key. Yes, the design is kind of retarded, but it is still basically behaving as intended.
diggdongNov 20, 2006
Sometimes convince does not lead to a luxury.
dracostimpyNov 20, 2006
Wow, diggdong, that was an appalling attempt at a coherent statement.
sugar1210Nov 28, 2006
This is the problem people were worried about all along.. of course it was going to happen. Anyone that has the device to read the RFID tags can tell what information the tag has on it.
kb1775Nov 29, 2006
sounds like RFID might be too good to be true, this should lead to concerns with other RFID applications limited only to the creative mind of the criminal. The possibilities are almost limitless, people could carry readers in airports and snag peoples passport info. However, problems like this can probably be solved by someone willing to work hard enough because once RFID is secure supply chain management will be improved greatly. Although this raises concern, at least it was discovered early enough that security can be added. This sort of reminds me of those Mobile speed pass things that some college students cracked and used to buy all sorts of gas station stuff (it was for a study/experiment, they didnt steal anything).