Most europeans countries have started issuing electronic passports and ID cards, the claim is that they're supposed to be more secure, some politicians have suggested that they were impossible to forge. Our country has signed a deal with a french company to issue electronic ID cards with the same fantasy in mind that he would be more secure. That fantasy is now disproved :
A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year.
The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery. But Lukas Grunwald, a security consultant with DN-Systems in Germany and an RFID expert, says the data in the chips is easy to copy.
“The whole passport design is totally brain damaged,” Grunwald says. “From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They’re not increasing security at all.”
Grunwald plans to demonstrate the cloning technique Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.
The United States has led the charge for global e-passports because authorities say the chip, which is digitally signed by the issuing country, will help them distinguish between official documents and forged ones. The United States plans to begin issuing e-passports to U.S. citizens beginning in October. Germany has already started issuing the documents.
In Belgium where I live, they'll probably go ahead anyway. The security companies have been lobbying the european commission for years now, 9/11 gave them a boost, they exploited the anti-terror climate to push their corporate agenda. Meanwhile, we're being monitored and tagged like cattle and the population is more interested in who's going to win the next Star Academy or the next football championship.
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