Current Event: According to Schneier’s blog hackers have come up with a way to make fake electronic passports. An electronic passport is a passport with a chip that reads the information pertinent to your passport. According to the United States’ government website, “The U.S. Electronic Passport uses the digital image of the passport photograph as the biometric identifier that is used with face recognition technology to verify the identity of the passport bearer. “ However as we have seen in class (Myth Busters) this doesn’t really provide a strong security. The original benefit of the passport was that it would allow travelers to get through customs and travel inspection much quicker because there are machines that read the passport, so the traveler would not have to wait in line to get their passport checked. On Schneier’s blog he links to a news story explaining how to modify and clone passports because the chip is not secure. The blog links to this website http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-epassport/ which explains how to modify a passport and make fake information in a few easy steps. There is even a video included. This is obviously a HUGE security problem, as the point of passports is to protect each country. With terrorism at a high right now, this should be a major concern to government officials. While this technology is flawed, it should not be thrown out, because people use to fake passports when they were normal no technical documents, so that is not the problem. The problem is that we put too much trust into letting machines do the jobs people should have. If at every machine there were security guards that confirm the passport is valid, many amateurs trying to fake the passport would be caught. Since the chip is part of the problem and can be altered previous to being inspected, we should only work to make a more advanced technology to address this issue, perhaps a stronger encryption is needs on the chips. The government should invest time and money into this issue if they want to keep their borders safe, since we now know of this problem.
Sources:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/
http://blog.thc.org/index.php?/archives/4-The-Risk-of-ePassports-and-RFID.html
http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-epassport/
http://travel.state.gov/passport/eppt/eppt_2498.html
What do you think about this? I know it slightly scares me.
-Cassie
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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I agree with Cassie, this information is quite disturbing if it is true. If the supposively secure chips are flawed, the threats to national security would be enormous, especially with the recent growth in terrorism. I do think, however, that the information posted on blogs should be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps the passport chips aren't completely secure, but I'm sure that government agencies are working just as hard to stop forgeries. I'm sure the government has not only hired "white hats" to try to crack their system, but also scan the internet for sites such as the one written about. I'm not completely disregarding the security threat to our passports, but I'm just not sure this source it 100% accurate.
ReplyDeletePersonally I’m impressed by the quality of this. Usually when I find stuff like this I stumble it. Although this time I’m not sure if this would be best for the users. I’ll look around and find another article that may work. IT Support Milton Keynes
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