A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year.
"The whole passport design is totally brain damaged," Grunwald says. "From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all."
Although countries have talked about encrypting data that's stored on passport chips, this would require that a complicated infrastructure be built first, so currently the data is not encrypted.
Grunwald's isn't the only research on e-passport problems circulating at Black Hat. Kevin Mahaffey and John Hering of Flexilis released a video Wednesday demonstrating that a privacy feature slated for the new passports may not work as designed.
As planned, U.S. e-passports will contain a web of metal fiber embedded in the front cover of the documents to shield them from unauthorized readers. Though Basic Access Control would keep the chip from yielding useful information to attackers, it would still announce its presence to anyone with the right equipment. The government added the shielding after privacy activists expressed worries that a terrorist could simply point a reader at a crowd and identify foreign travelers.
In theory, with metal fibers in the front cover, nobody can sniff out the presence of an e-passport that's closed. But Mahaffey and Hering demonstrated in their video how even if a passport opens only half an inch -- such as it might if placed in a purse or backpack -- it can reveal itself to a reader at least two feet away.
Using a mockup e-passport modeled on the U.S. design, they showed how an attacker could connect a hidden, improvised bomb to a reader such that it triggers an explosion when a passport-holder comes within range.
