My new RFID passport - less secure than an old pap

[swee]

My new RFID passport - less secure than an old paper version. Thanks Tony, you utter t***!

UK security experts have cracked the sooper sekure new UK biometric passports. It took 48 hours. With £174 worth of sniffer hardware, attackers can read all the personal information off of any of the three million new UK passports in circulation — and if combined with demonstrated hacks for reading RFIDs at a distance, this could happen from across the room, or even farther. You can then clone the RFID and stick it in another passport (surprise! your identity is now owned by a terrorist!).
(Source: BoingBoing)

Brilliant! And so the ‘War On Terror’ rolls blindly on, over the bodies of 655,000 Iraqi dead and the rights and safety of Britons. Blair’s shiny new RFID passport has already been cracked.

If you read the Guardian article linked from BoingBoing, the Home Office plays down the dangers. But what they can’t deny is that information can now be sucked straight off your passport, at a distance, without you even knowing it. Listen to this genius:

“This doesn’t matter,” says a Home Office spokesman. “By the time you have accessed the information on the chip, you have already seen it on the passport. What use would my biometric image be to you? And even if you had the information, you would still have to counterfeit the new passport - and it has lots of new security features. If you were a criminal, you might as well just steal a passport.”
(Source: The Guardian)

Hello? Are you awake? The difference is that you would know if your passport had been nicked! With RFID data theft, you’re completely unaware of any risk.

More than that: if it “doesn’t matter” that the data is stolen, why bother putting it on an RFID in the first place? Just to waste millions of our taxes?

I am so angry right now. Just like our illegal invasion of Iraq, the UK government is now herding us all in the wrong direction and won’t brook any logical criticism. We’re being forced to pay for expensive new passports which are less secure than the old ones!

Is there any end to this government’s stupidity and lunatic dis-regard for our safety? (2006)
http://www.bzangygroink.co.uk/wordpress/archives/2006/11/18/uk-passport-rfid-chips-cracked/

[The Colonel]

I shouldn't worry Swee...all terrorists do what they do in the name of god. It shouldn't bother you now should it...

[monosodium]

My new RFID passport - less secure than an old paper version. Thanks Tony, you utter t***!

UK security experts have cracked the sooper sekure new UK biometric passports. It took 48 hours. With £174 worth of sniffer hardware, attackers can read all the personal information off of any of the three million new UK passports in circulation — and if combined with demonstrated hacks for reading RFIDs at a distance, this could happen from across the room, or even farther. You can then clone the RFID and stick it in another passport (surprise! your identity is now owned by a terrorist!).
(Source: BoingBoing)

Brilliant! And so the ‘War On Terror’ rolls blindly on, over the bodies of 655,000 Iraqi dead and the rights and safety of Britons. Blair’s shiny new RFID passport has already been cracked.

If you read the Guardian article linked from BoingBoing, the Home Office plays down the dangers. But what they can’t deny is that information can now be sucked straight off your passport, at a distance, without you even knowing it. Listen to this genius:

“This doesn’t matter,” says a Home Office spokesman. “By the time you have accessed the information on the chip, you have already seen it on the passport. What use would my biometric image be to you? And even if you had the information, you would still have to counterfeit the new passport - and it has lots of new security features. If you were a criminal, you might as well just steal a passport.”
(Source: The Guardian)

...

Is there any end to this government’s stupidity and lunatic dis-regard for our safety? (2006)
http://www.bzangygroink.co.uk/wordpress/archives/2006/11/18/uk-passport-rfid-chips-cracked/

Actually those articles are old news and they've fixed the problem which allowed the chips to be read as there is now a lining of foil inside the passport cover which should provide sufficient protection to stop the chip from being reliably read while it is closed, so you should be ok.

Dear mr home office spokesman, it is not just biometric data on the cip so they could use the information to request a new passport in your name...

What is more fun is the new RFID credit cards, where once you've used them with your pin (once), will allow you to make as many subsequent payments (up to ten pounds a time) as you like without having to enter a pin or sign anything... no opportunity for fraud there.

Swee - I hope you're a member of No2ID if not, you should be.