In Britain, the government line of ‘trust us, this is for your safety’ has been interrupted by — imagine! — a bit of bad news. From The Times: ‘Fakeproof’ e-passport is cloned in minutes.
New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports.
Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime. The flaws also undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week were worthless because they could not be forged.
In the tests, a computer researcher cloned the chips on two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports. [continue]
This is an automated message from the era of high technology: “Nothing can go wrong…go wrong…g o w r o n n g….”
Shocking. Absolutely shocking. Who knew? Geez.