OT: Hackers crack new biometric passports

[Meng Cheah]

*Hackers crack new biometric passports*

*Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
Monday August 7, 2006
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>*

Hi-tech biometric passports used by Britain and other countries have 
been hacked by a computer expert, throwing into doubt fundamental parts 
of the UK's £415m scheme to load passports with information such as 
fingerprints, facial scans and iris patterns.

Speaking at the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas, Lukas Grunwald, 
a consultant with a German security company, said he had discovered a 
method for cloning the information stored in the new passports. Data can 
be transferred onto blank chips, which could then be implanted in fake 
passports, a flaw which he said undermined the project.

The revelation also casts another shadow over the government's plan for 
a national ID card, which would contain much of the same information.

/More at http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1838751,00.html

There is also a link to a 200 page report on ID cards (in pdf)
/
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