RFID Passports Cloned Without Opening the Package

Jeremy writes to tell us that using some simple deduction, a security consultant discovered how to clone a passport as it's being mailed to its recipient, without ever opening the package. "But the key in this first generation of biometric passport is relatively easy to identify/crack. It is not random, but consists of passport number, the passport holder's date of birth and the passport expiry date. The Mail found it relatively easy to identify the holder's date of birth, while the expiry date is 10 years from the issue date, which for a newly-delivered passport would clearly fall within a few days. The passport number consists of a number of predictable elements, including an identifier for the issuing office, so effectively a significant part of the key can be reconstructed from the envelope and its address label."

Comments

Does anyone remember Rainman?

[TheRealMindChild]

It was the movie with the retard that won some money. As I recall, there was a guy who watched cards long enough that he figured out a pattern that would let him win every time. He played for like three days, and won a crazy amount of money. The movie went to DVD, but I remember reading that the dealers who hosted the game offered to make it 'true random' for another $600, and the pit boss refused to pay it. This article reminds me of that story.

Re:I get it...

[drinkypoo]

We don't want to kill our own citizens, unless we can make more money selling their organs (hello, China!) than by incarcerating them. Which we can't. It costs us an enormous amount of money to keep someone incarcerated for a year. In fact, prisoners cost us more than students! This is pretty well inexplicable to me. There's no reason it should be so expensive to keep people locked up and fed. Well, there is a reason; the corrections system is padded at every level, and the kickbacks go to the people who make the campaign contributions. Regardless, the point is that it's more cost-effective to incarcerate them, because then you can milk more money out of the taxpayers.