Another hit against individuals - biometric passport chips hacked

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A Kiwi computer whiz is among a small group of international scientists to prove electronic passports can be easily copied, changed and passed off as genuine.

Auckland University researcher Peter Gutmann found a way to program a new signature into an altered passport microchip allowing it to be recognised as authentic by the reading technology.

Gutmann, British computer expert Adam Laurie and Amsterdam academic Jeroen van Beek successfully copied the contents of a British boy's electronic passport to another chip and replaced his digital photograph with one of Osama bin Laden.

The altered chip was reprogrammed with a signature key and recognised as genuine by the International Civil Aviation Organisation's passport reading software, UK's The Times newspaper reported.

Gutmann told the Sunday Star-Times his role in the experiment was "embarrassingly simple".

His colleagues were credited with the more complex tasks of cloning and altering the chip's data which is meant to be secure. "It was a three-person effort."

Gutmann became internationally well-known in the late 90s for developing a highly sophisticated but easy-to-use encryption security kit for businesses, and later his scathing and widely publicised criticism of Microsoft's Vista operating system.

He told the Star-Times security experts have questioned the safety of microchip or electronic passports for years.

The move towards "biometric" passports which store personal information and a digital photo of the owner on a microchip have been driven by the US to beef up security. Passports issued since October 2004 had to have a chip or the holders would be denied access to the US.

The e-passport technology "was never really robust to begin with", Gutmann said. "This was the whole point... People like us had been pointing out that there were serious security problems with this thing for years. We set out to show that we're not just blowing smoke, there really are security problems.

"The Bush administration's ongoing paranoia campaign" had forced the rest of the world, including New Zealand, to adopt the passports, he said.

The move to introduce them had always been more politically driven than technically sound, he said.
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While of course this technology would never be impregnable, it simply means that as the issue becomes more widespread - meaning that laymen figure out how to hack and alter the chips, it pushes us one step closer to something more invasive. And while that technology may also have its vulnerabilities, it won't stop them.