South Korean Citizen IDs Vulnerable, Based On US Model

An anonymous reader writes: South Korea's Resident Registration Number (RRN) has been proven 'vulnerable to almost any adversary' by the 'Queen of re-identification', Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney, who previously proved that 87 percent of all Americans could be uniquely identified using just their ZIP code, birthdate, and sex. Sweeney was able to decrypt personal information from the RRN numbers of 23,163 deceased Koreans with 100% success by two different methods of attack, and notes that the South Korean system is based on one currently in use in the U.S.

Comments

What's so secret about those numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm only familiar with the Swedish model which uses a ten-digit number starting with the person's birth date on the form YYMMDD, three serial digits and a checksum. The key is that it's not designed to be secret at all, you're supposed to use it everywhere and for everything. It's just an ID number, simply knowing it does not entail authentication or authorization.

Re:What's so secret about those numbers?

[timrod]

The American model of identification number is basically supposed to be a secret between you, your employer, your insurer, your financial institution, and the government. The reason for this is that this is what you use to sign up for things like bank accounts and credit cards - and there's nothing in place to stop someone who has your SSN from getting a bunch of credit cards in your name and maxing them out.

Korea is kind of weird in that they want their numbers to be secret, but have people use them for a lot of things. One of the most wide-scale cases of identity theft in South Korea for a long time (I don't know if it's the case as much today) was in MMORPGs, where they required people to sign up with a Korean identification number to play. There was actually a huge database of so called "KSSNs" (Korean Social Security Number) that were used to do this. The reason for this, oddly enough, had to do with a breach in a game called Lineage 2 that required KSSNs for registration - after the breach, the Korean government mandated that all online games use KSSNs for signups. I've heard they also use them for social media stuff but I've never seen that firsthand.

Re:What's so secret about those numbers?

[Pi1grim]

This.

Same system in Estonia. What USA lacks for their SSN - is proper authorisation. Estonia, for example, has state-issued smartcards with assymetric cryptography keys generated on-die and then signed by central certification center, so that at any time you can verify whether ID is active, is not listed as stolen, etc. Software developed to work with the cards is opensourced and available for Win, Lin, Mac under BSD license and can be used to sign documents and encrypt documents for transit (public keys of all active IDs are stored on central certification server, much like GPG keyservers). Number in itself is in no way valid identification, only a valid signature by the private key is accepted as proof of identity. And guess what - identity theft problem solved in most part.

Re:What's so secret about those numbers?

[Dutch Gun]

a secret between you, your employer, your insurer, your financial institution, and the government.

And that's precisely why in today's world, such a system is broken by default.

It's fine for identification, but we should stop screwing around with a simple 10-digit numbers as a means of authentication. Rather, as citizens, we should be given a tamper-resistant USB hardware dongle that contains a completely secret private key (which literally NO ONE knows - a completely random 256-bit number generated at manufacturing) with a read-only API to decrypt messages created with the public key. The government then officially associates that device's PUBLIC key with our SSID. Even if we lose control of our SSID, only someone with that hardware dongle can definitely prove they are who they say they are, even online.

This way, we can easily and securely authenticate ourselves online for important transactions, like securing a loan or a credit card, or signing up for a service which would otherwise require your SSID today (like a health plan). The organization would request the public key for a given SSID from a public government database. The organization then would need to query that hardware device, which shouldn't be too much more difficult than what some second-factor authentication devices already do today.

If the dongle is lost, stolen, or breaks, we go into our local Social Security office (like I recently had to do for a new SSID card), prove we are who we say we are to a human being, and we purchase a new dongle and public key, which is then associated with our existing SSID. Existing accounts should only care about your SSID and the fact that you authorized correctly once. It's only when you need to authorize your identity again would the new public key be read from a central government repository.

This seems way too easy for me, so I'm sure I'm missing something. Any thoughts on why this might not work?

Re:What's so secret about those numbers?

[gl4ss]

"your employer, your insurer, your financial institution, and the government. " and for that reason also your operator, cable provider, random cc providers...

it's not a secret. shouldn't be treated like a secret. it's just an identifier. but oh well a nation that treats 40 year old paper as proof that you're some 40 year old dude..

Re:What's so secret about those numbers?

[gl4ss]

yeah it's there, so what? it's not a secret, it's not meant to be a secret. the documents detailing your health as you were born are supposed to be confidential, not the fact that you were born with a dick.

and there's countries that have citizens who have lived for generations there but don't have any id, number or even official citizenship to act as a citizen and without the usual human rights to boot.

I don't see what's so great about that.

having an unique to you social security number is handy. it doesn't need to be a secret, when you use it your id is verified by other means - just trusting a string of numbers that stays the SAME through your whole life and is given to countless officials staying secret is so fucking stupid to begin with that it's just a present for ID thieves.

and really, you don't even give it away that often(the ssn in nordic countries).

Re:What's so secret about those numbers?

[ShanghaiBill]

Any thoughts on why this might not work?

Because it will be interpreted as the Mark of the Beast prophesied in the Book of Revelations. If you still think your plan could work, then please write to CNBC and convince the moderator to ask about your scheme during the next Republican debate on Oct 28th.

SSN are not secret

[ljhiller]

Never mind that SSN are plastered everywhere, even if you don't tell me the first 5 digits, if I know your birthday and place of birth and the last 4 digits, I know all 9. It's a public algorithm.

Re:SSN are not secret

[ShanghaiBill]

even if you don't tell me the first 5 digits, if I know your birthday and place of birth and the last 4 digits, I know all 9. It's a public algorithm.

Not true. My sister and I were born two years apart and in different states. Our SSNs were issued on the same day, and are identical except for the last digit. They just pulled the next two numbers off the list. There is no "algorithm".

Re: SSN are not secret

[AvitarX]

In the early 80s, SSN became required to receive child tax deductions (I believe it was then, part of regan closing loop holes).

I suspect this is when you received your SSNs. I am born 81, but have the SSN of someone born a few years later myself.

The algorithm exists, but it's not based on birth, it's based on registration.