OT: Hackers crack new biometric passports

[Jamon Camisso]

Meng Cheah wrote:
> *Hackers crack new biometric passports*
> 
> *Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
> Monday August 7, 2006
> The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>*

How to clone the copy-friendly biometric passport
By John Lettice
Published Friday 4th August 2006 13:08 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/04/cloning_epassports/

"... The ICAO documentation Grunwald consulted is publicly available,
and explains the detail of the various levels of security of the
ePassport system, the baseline level being something not unadjacent to
zero..."

For proponents of security though obscurity, that sentence there is
pretty much all you'd need to construct a rhetorically charged, loosely
factually based, FUD mongering condemnation of the whole notion of open
source (I use the term loosely, not specifically in the software sense
of the word).

What this really means is that, despite the apparent failures of the
system presently, the next version or updates to the chips will likely
be secured in a more secretive manner. i.e. no more open access to the
ICAO's how and what documentation. Just imagine how secretive they'll be
allowed to be once DNA imprinting becomes commonplace.
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