UK National ID Card Cloned In 12 Minutes

Death Metal writes with this excerpt from Computer Weekly, which casts some doubt on the security of the UK's proposed personal identification credential: "The prospective national ID card was broken and cloned in 12 minutes, the Daily Mail revealed this morning. The newspaper hired computer expert Adam Laurie to test the security that protects the information embedded in the chip on the card. Using a Nokia mobile phone and a laptop computer, Laurie was able to copy the data on a card that is being issued to foreign nationals in minutes."

Comments

Outstanding.

[palegray.net]

I just can't wait for national ID cards here in the States! It'll be great for plausible deniability: "Oh, you say you saw ID? Prove it was really me."

Re:Outstanding.

[siloko]

I think there are two things of note. First the article is in the Daily Mail which has a populist agenda usually veering alarmingly to the right. They have jumped on the anti-id bandwagon so maybe this article should be taken with a pinch of salt. Secondly if it is true it raises some interesting points. Who did the UK Government get to test the security on these cards? How do you respond to such a public relations disaster? How to you tally lax security with bullet proof identification and if this is not possible what plausible reason is there for rolling these things out nationally? I would be very interested to get a Government spokesmen on Question Time squirming to reply to those questions, because they are essentially unanswerable whilst still clinging to the existing policy. And too much money has been spent for this Government to change it now . . .

Can't have digital security

[HetMes]

If it's digital, exact copies are possible.
If it's digital, because of the convenience, analogue security measures will be taken less seriously.
If it's digital, uninformed politicians will think it cool, and believe in it like some do in 70 virgins.
If it's digital, the process is fast and can be automated, and the threat is increased a million-fold (out of arse, of course) by sheer statistics. We need slow electronics
If it's digital, tampering is undetectable.

Either way, this digitally secure ID thing can only lead to government saying: "Look! We've tried, and you also know that the only way to do this properly is to put you all in a database and track your every move."

Can we perhaps agree on forsaking digital security just because it's cheaper and faster in cases where we don't need it anyway (i.e. when people aren't up to no good)?

Re:Can't have digital security

[Koookiemonster]

What's interesting about technology like this -- such as electronic voting, passports with chips etc -- is that geeks are often against it. Geeks, who generally love technology and gadgetry, are saying no. Maybe the legislators should listen -- assuming that at least some of them actually care.

Re:Can't have digital security

[Keeper Of Keys]

You're right. Unfortunately they only listen to the geeks they are paying to create systems like this, who are of course saying "yes, we can make an uncrackable security system" and suppressing their sniggers until they've made it out of the room with their fat cheque.

Surprising

[AdamInParadise]

I work in the smartcard industry and most of the time those "breaks" mean nothing: usually the "hacker" simply reads the publicly available information and claims that the system is "broken". The reaction of the public is always interesting and shows that many users do not understand the goals of such a system, probably because the politicians that buy those systems do not explain them very well.

However in this case the article claims that they were able to clone the card AND modify the information in the cloned card, which is really the hack that those cards are trying to prevent. This article is heavier on details than many others and that makes it more credible, but the details are still muddy. I hope that the journalist missed a crucial point and that this card is not as insecure as he thinks.

Small-scale, private smartcard-based systems can be cracked, usually because they are badly installed and used. Large-scale, private smartcard-based systems can be cracked (just look into the MiFare Classic debacle) but it involves months of hard work from people with PhDs and access to expensive equipement. Large-scale, govermental smartcard-based systems can be cracked, but I would be really surprised if it took only a few minutes. Unless that hacker presents the attack in details, I will file this one in the "baseless fearmongering in order to sell more papers" folder (which is already bursting BTW).

Re:The thing that no one ever thinks of..

[martyros]

If you'd RTFA, you'd see that he also changed a ton of information as well, and created a fake ID with the modified information; including a line that said, "I am a terrorist, please shoot me on sight."

IOW, there's no security, signing, encryption, anything at all (or if there is it's so broken that it might as well not be there). The fact that it's computerized makes it easier to fake out rather than harder, and simultaneously gives the illusion of being more reliable rather than less. It's bad all around.

Expensive Equipment?

[TerraGreyling]

Unless there have been leeps and bounds in smart card technology in the past couple of years I think this is an overstatement. A few years back I made most my money buying blank smart cards, copying the information from the satelite TV smartcards, changing a few places in the hexidecimal coding, and selling full unblocked TV. Of course we would tell the user to remove the cards from the boxes at night when the companys would do system checks that fry any unauthorized cards. And the cost of such equipment, $49.95. Not expensive and on about average, 15 minutes of work. If the UK is using the same format, that would be a real easy "hack".

Re:The thing that no one ever thinks of..

[daem0n1x]

Here in Portugal we've had ID cards since the 19th century. We were pioneers in the usage of smart cards as ID cards, together with Belgium and Finland.

While our old paper ID cards were easily falsifiable, the new smart card is virtually impossible to falsify. It has a lot of physical security measures, a few holograms, engravings, etc. As to the chip, all the data in the chip is digitally signed by the government. The RSA private keys inside are generated by the card during personalisation, and are not extractable. I dare you try to create a false one. The British card seems to be a cheap piece of shit.

Anyway, what's all the fuss about ID cards? What do you use to identify yourself? Social Security card? Driver's license? How hard it is to forge one of these?

This is the biggest problem

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And the government expert witness, on the goverment's payroll of course, will say the ID is nearly infallible and you'll end up in jail.

I think this is symptomatic of the biggest single problem with so many government powers.

Things will inevitably go wrong in any system as large and complicated as running a national government. This will be true even if everyone tries to be diligent and acts with nothing but good intentions. There is no point either pretending that this won't happen or pretending that it would be better if we dropped all government systems that could possibly cause such problems no matter how much good they might otherwise do.

However, there should always be a system in place that allows mistakes to be detected and put right quickly, and without making things any worse for the unlucky victim. This is particularly true in cases of mistaken identity or other factual errors, where the consequences might be anything from financial loss such as being denied benefits or overtaxed, through loss of reputation and all the damage to relationships and career that might entail, right through to violent arrest and detention (or worse).

As a declaration of interest, I am particularly sceptical about any claims relating to ID, because I was once overtaxed significantly due to a case of mistaken identity at a government tax office. It was bad enough that I was left short of money to pay my rent without warning, but even worse that it took nearly three months and a huge amount of effort on my part to get it put right, and I never received so much as a real apology or full explanation afterwards. I can forgive a data entry error by someone who's probably earning near the minimum wage and typing hundreds or thousands of these numbers every day. I can't forgive a system that damages me for months afterwards because it can't acknowledge that it made a mistake.