You shouldn't be that worried, The main key players in the security of the card are Banksys and Ubizen As you may know (or not), Banksys does bank security stuff etc... and Ubizen is one of the world leaders when it comes to securing data.
I'm curious. What does the eID actually do? Does it actually have cryptographic smarts in it, or is it just the same old data from the old ID, only designed in such a way as to be read out electronically? Does it require authentication (from you or the interrogator) before divulging?
All data is by default encrypted on the chip. There is no magnetic strip like on credit cards.
The chip is commonly used all over the world and very secure. However, the security depends on the encryption. If I'm not mistaken, the current encryption is 128 (or higher) bits. I cannot say the exact type of encryption, but I assume it's the best around.
And the most important, you need a 4 digit pin code to access the data on the chip.
For now, you still need a paper with the eID card with your curent residence on it, but all data that is a fact (like date of birth and so) is stored on the card.
The purpose of this eID card is to manage easily different types of information at different places. Just bring in the card in a (special) reader, and all needed info can be retrieved in the reader's system.
MS has nothing to do with the eID card, Bill just likes it, and sees it as an opportunity for additional security. If you don't want to use it, leave it in your wallet.
Just see this as a different way of smart card authentication.
In one of the earlier comments, it was also pointed out that this chip can be used for lots of things: cell phone cards, proton (the electronic cash we can store on our bank cards), phone cards, SIS cards (for our social security), and many other things...
(ex-)US marines can actually know the proton thing, it was (or still is) distributed in the late 90's among soldiers, for use on there base for making payments of small amounts.
The chip has a proven security and will continue to spread around the world.
You can actually buy empty smart cards, with a chip, and program those chips yourself.
On a personal base, I do not like the eID card. I just don't like the government and all that's associated with it:)
But I do see the advantages of such a card in terms of security (and certainly identity theft).
Sven,
Belgian citizen
Hey, admit it, do you expect this to happen when you uninstall something from a well known company?
btw, I write all my backups once a week (3 DVD's), mostly on sundays, this happened on friday...
I'm in a desperate search for affordable TR-5 10/20GB tapes for my recently acquired tape drive. Then I could do a daily backup fully automated, as it should be. Unfortunately, they are quite expensive, and very difficult to get...
Well, a week ago, I got into some serious pc troubles uninstalling a stupid tool of the first Half Life, named the 'Sierra Utilities'. It uninstalled about 40 GB of my data before I even noticed it was doing that. Here are some mails I wrote, with their replies.
From: Sven Meeus Date: Friday, January 21, 2005 04:08 PM To: tsvu@vugames.com (tsvu@vugames.com) Subject: Un-install of Sierra Utilities cleaned my HDD
Thanks very much for your really great BUG in your uninstall soft of the Sierra Utilities.
I have lost about 40GB of data, game saves, patches, mods, applications, BACKUPS!!!, PERSONAL DOCUMENTS!!!, DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS!!!, and lots of other data due to the uninstall of the software!
Now I have to pay for Data Recovery software to get, hopefully, my data back.
The game Half-Life uninstalled perfectly, but your UTILDEL.EXE program was a little to busy, and when I noticed that it kept running in my task manager and choose to terminate it when I got a little suspicious. However, THE DAMAGE WAS ALREADY DONE!
What are you going to do about it?
I expect a very good compensation for this!
And I will send you a status report in a couple of days whith all files deleted, and the ones that I hopefully manage to recover.
Sven Meeus
In their reply:
From: VUGames [mailto:tsvu@vugames.com] Sent: woensdag 26 januari 2005 13:08 To: Sven Meeus Subject: RE:'Vivendi=085-000'Un-install of Sierra Utilities cleaned my HDD
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Vivendi Universal Games Technical Support.
I am very sorry to hear about the damage that has been caused,but HalfLife doesn't contain any bug which would create any harm to the system,so i would suggest you to contact your system vendor to get the issue rectified.
Please feel free to contact us if you need further assistance. You may access the technical support knowledge base at: http://support.vugames.com
Regards,
Shiraz Vivendi Universal Games Technical Support
So I replied back:
From: Sven Meeus Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 04:23 PM To: 'VUGames' (tsvu@vugames.com) Subject: RE: Un-install of Sierra Utilities cleaned my HDD
Hi,
It's not the uninstall of the game half life that caused the it. It was the uninstall of the Sierra Utilities, Found separatly in 'Add/Remove Programs' of XP.
The Game and the utilities were installed under 'D:\Halflife'. I made a mistake and it should have been installed under 'D:\Games\Halflife'. This is the reason I uninstalled everything in the first place.
Fact is, I was not able to recover my 'D:\Backup' containing all my daily backup files. 'D:\Games' and all games installed under this folder, are lost almost completely, losing a lot of save games, and all other data relevant to games I had installed. Then, 'D:\My Documents' was also gone, and concentrated on this folder first to recover as much as possible. I managed to recover most off the files I had in here. This folder is also the 'My Documents' of my profile (Registry modification). Another VERY IMPORTANT folder was 'D:\Develop', under wich everything concerning my personal development projects is stored; VC++ projects, to databases, websites, sourcesafe, and all other things concerning development. Since 'D:\Develop\VSS' is the most important folder in here, it's my SourceSafe root folder, and everything I develop is stored in this sourcesafe database. I concentrated on this folder, even before the 'My Documents' to recover all data since my last backup (10+ GB data). Luckily, the files that were lost, were still available on my backup DVD's, on a few exceptions, giving problems now in my sourcesafe database integrety. Hopefully they can all be resolved in a quick and easy
Slashdot Mirror
You shouldn't be that worried, The main key players in the security of the card are Banksys and Ubizen
As you may know (or not), Banksys does bank security stuff etc... and Ubizen is one of the world leaders when it comes to securing data.
I'm curious. What does the eID actually do? Does it actually have cryptographic smarts in it, or is it just the same old data from the old ID, only designed in such a way as to be read out electronically? Does it require authentication (from you or the interrogator) before divulging? All data is by default encrypted on the chip. There is no magnetic strip like on credit cards. The chip is commonly used all over the world and very secure. However, the security depends on the encryption. If I'm not mistaken, the current encryption is 128 (or higher) bits. I cannot say the exact type of encryption, but I assume it's the best around. And the most important, you need a 4 digit pin code to access the data on the chip. For now, you still need a paper with the eID card with your curent residence on it, but all data that is a fact (like date of birth and so) is stored on the card. The purpose of this eID card is to manage easily different types of information at different places. Just bring in the card in a (special) reader, and all needed info can be retrieved in the reader's system. MS has nothing to do with the eID card, Bill just likes it, and sees it as an opportunity for additional security. If you don't want to use it, leave it in your wallet. Just see this as a different way of smart card authentication. In one of the earlier comments, it was also pointed out that this chip can be used for lots of things: cell phone cards, proton (the electronic cash we can store on our bank cards), phone cards, SIS cards (for our social security), and many other things... (ex-)US marines can actually know the proton thing, it was (or still is) distributed in the late 90's among soldiers, for use on there base for making payments of small amounts. The chip has a proven security and will continue to spread around the world. You can actually buy empty smart cards, with a chip, and program those chips yourself. On a personal base, I do not like the eID card. I just don't like the government and all that's associated with it :)
But I do see the advantages of such a card in terms of security (and certainly identity theft).
Sven,
Belgian citizen
Thanks for the info. I have never known about this bug, or I have forgotten.
Euhm, no :)
Hey, admit it, do you expect this to happen when you uninstall something from a well known company? btw, I write all my backups once a week (3 DVD's), mostly on sundays, this happened on friday... I'm in a desperate search for affordable TR-5 10/20GB tapes for my recently acquired tape drive. Then I could do a daily backup fully automated, as it should be. Unfortunately, they are quite expensive, and very difficult to get...
It uninstalled about 40 GB of my data before I even noticed it was doing that.
Here are some mails I wrote, with their replies.
In their reply:
So I replied back: