Germany To Roll Out ID Cards With Embedded RFID

An anonymous reader writes "The production of RFID chips, an integral element of the new generation of German identity cards, has started after the government gave a 10-year contract to the chipmaker NXP in the Netherlands. Citizens will receive the mandatory new ID cards starting from the first of November. The new card allows German authorities to identify people with speed and accuracy, the government said. These authorities include the police, customs and tax authorities and of course the local registration and passport granting authorities. There are some concerns that the use of RFID chips will pose a security or privacy risk, however. Early versions of the electronic passports, using RFID chips with a protocol called 'basic access control' (BAC), were successfully hacked by university researchers and security experts."

Comments

perfect bomb triggers

[vinsci]

The new card allows German authorities to identify people with speed and accuracy, the government said.

Unfortunately, they will also make perfect bomb triggers, when the target walks by.

Re:perfect bomb triggers

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't happen.

The chip is based on the ISO14443-A standard and you can only communicate with it over at most 15 cm distance (about 6 inch). Under normal conditions the range goes down to roughly one inch. You have to walk very close to the bomb to set it off.

A bomb will also have a hard time to identify you. The chip has an ID that is public readable, but for privacy reasons this ID is a random number that is only valid for a single transaction session.

Also the article is wrong. The pass will not use the BAC protocol but the much improved PACE protocol. That's state of the art crypto. It's still broken by design because you can do a simple man in the middle attack over the air, but it is a lot better..

Mythbusters - RFID

[object404]

Adam Savage's talk on the 2008 Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference on why Mythbusters was forced to not do the "how easy it is to hack RFID tags" episode is very, very interesting.