British "Secure" Passports Cracked 305
hard-to-get-a-nickna writes "The Guardian has cracked the so-trumpeted secure British passports after 48 hours of work:
'Three million Britons have been issued with the new hi-tech passport, designed to frustrate terrorists and fraudsters. So why did Steve Boggan and a friendly computer expert find it so easy to break the security codes?'"
News at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, kids: government intervention is good.
Governments and computers don't mix (Score:4, Insightful)
In any case, isn't 3DES being phased out because the cost of cracking it has fallen dramatically recently?
Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Insightful)
What fundamental principle of encryption are they breaking? If anything, a fundamental principle of encryption is that there can't be such a thing as a "secret key" if you're either putting it in the passport or if you're deploying it to everybody that needs to scan passports (remember DVD encryption?).
What's important is to have the data in the passport (along with the picture) digitally signed, in order to avoid tampering. The article claims that these passports are indeed signed and they didn't break the signature. Big surprise, since all they did was get a RFID reader and decrypt 3DES with the key right in front of them.
Don't see how you can... but anyway an exploit would be a problem with the reading software, not with the passports. And it could be more easily patched after deployment.
The article then presents some more valid points... but these have nothing to do with the basic encryption being broken. FUD mostly, surprise, surprise.
fake passports in 911? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this true? I had the impression that the 911 terrorists had valid ID, but I haven't read the 911 commssion report...
Can somone point me to some information confirming or disproving this assertion?
Re:How indeed ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reader at the cutoms employee's desk has to be able to read the passport data. It has to know the key.
Instead of installing a super-secret key in all readers around the world (and having to pray that it does not somehow leak out), the designers opted to use a separate key for each passport and have it printed on the passport itself, so that it can be used by the reader.
This is only intended to protect against the "reading in the metro" scenario. Not to protect against reading your own passsport using an RFID reader.
Also, many scenarios written after such discoveries assume that the readability of the data implies it can be modified to commit fraud. This is not true. The data is signed using public-key encryption, and modifications are easily detected by the reader.
But no, this is great news (Score:5, Insightful)
We do have some complete fuckwits in charge. Of course, we do have some complete fuckwits voting for them, so it kind of balances out. Someone care to suggest an improvement on democracy?
Re:fake passports in 911? (Score:1, Insightful)
But it was very difficult to tighten the grip on the citizens and visitors. After all, it was a free country. In the cold-war years, they were pointing fingers at "the enemy" and explaining that citizens were "not free" there. They were being tracked.
But when the cold war was over, the authorities really wanted to limit this freedom. They were waiting for an opportunity to do so. 9/11 was the big opportunity.
The article is missing one word. (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the missing word is "yet".
As usual, it leaks (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want to sound trollish, but the major force behind biometric passports worldwide is Homeland Security in USA: "You want visa free entrance to US? Make biometric passports!". Honestly, this is plain bullying.
Besides, if the border guard thinks the passport is "secure", then he'll spend less time thinking about that person and just rely on the big "OK" that pops on his screen when he swipes the thing instead of evaluating the person with his brain and guts.
TFA mentions brute-force protection. For a thing, like credit card, that can be replaced within 3-5 days, it's ok, but for a passport, that some joker "brute-forced" and now it is locked, it is really tragic, especially if You are away from home and this is Your only ID.
I think that the ID should be un-trivial to counterfeit. It should deter "common" people from tampering with it for some small, petty crimes. For well funded operations, obtaining a real passport isn't a problem - bribe the migration official and he issues You one on whatever name.
My slightly watered point is - ID should be used for "some" identification. Trust is a human thing and not machine solvable.
Heck, Your motherboard may be bugged right now by some weird conspiracy and no matter what security measures You take, such as bug sweeps or cable checks, You're screwed already since CIA and NSA and Mossad altered the CPU. It's a human thing.
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:3, Insightful)
The, "if you can read it you can clone it" part?
Or the, "you could use a cloned passport to exploit the system" part?
I think the first is obviously true.
I think the second only requires a small amount of imagination - clone a passport of someone who looks similar to you and you are good to go, especially since the customs agents will inevitably start relying on the computer to validate people rather than their own judgement.
And this leads me to say (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:3, Insightful)
You wouldn't even need to clone it for that... merely steal it. If agents inevitably start relying on the computer that's where the problem lies. The checking procedure could be designed in order to somehow "force" a visual ID.
There's a lot you can innovate in that direction, which deals more with psychology than encryption. While making un-clonable passports would probably be a lot harder if not impossible.
Re:Easy to clone (Score:1, Insightful)
You need to read printed details to get access to the RFID. Sure, you can pick-pocket the passport, read what you need and then clone the RFID - but then you could just pick-pocket an old fashioned passport and spy-camera the page. But I can't pwn your life just by standing next to you on the tube.
RFID's coming whether you tinfoil types like it or not. Why not start a business manufacturing Faraday-cage passport holders or something?
"This doesn't matter" spin (Score:5, Insightful)
It matters a great deal because what they said couldn't be done can be done.
It transpired a couple of years ago that some models of the expensive Kryptonite bicycle lock could be opened with a BIC pen. The Kryptonite company could have spun this by saying "This doesn't matter, because the security expert who demonstrated this didn't really steal the bicycle, and bicycle owners actually keep their valuables in their safe deposit boxes."
What the Kryptonite company really did was acknowledge that this was a serious problem and recalled all the locks.
Would that the UK government addressed the security problem instead of the PR problem.
two things (Score:3, Insightful)
The key idea then is that the chip never sends the secret directly, so a cloner could never guess it, even if it could issue an unlimited number of challenges to the original chip. And without the secret, it cannot produce a clone that would authenticate.
So in short to clone the chip you need more than the chip, you need to compromise the manufacturer of the system to get the secret.
Re:Another DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep - just think how often your credit card signature is actually checked against that on the slip. Over here in the UK we've moved to chip 'n PIN, but a couple of recent trips to America really shocked me - my signature was NEVER checked against that on the card and on several occasions I paid using a terminal where the card was swiped, no PIN needed, no signature.
Passports and ID cards are going to go the same way. The government is telling us the passports/cards are guaranteed unforgeable so the users of the card are going to assume the card is the 'gold standard' for identity. If the card says it is genuine, then let that person through, don't worry about double-checking - the system has to be right doesn't it?
Re:Another DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
They wish to establish a world where all people can be instantly identified, correlated with commercial profiles, and tracked wherever they travel.
How can this be done "securely"? It cannot.
Let's assume you get these politicians to understand some basics of encryption and physical security (and good luck with that). So, you now have a system where all people can be instantly identified and tracked by the government. Secure from... what, exactly? Secure from being tracked by unauthorized people?
Who is unauthorized, and why? I certainly have no say in who gets authorized to track me. Thousands or hundreds of thousands of random workers have access to the "authorized" level. This doesn't sound very "secure" to me.
It's like an electrocution collar you get to wear around town, "secure" in the knowledge that its encryption protocol is flawless. The only people who can activate it are from the police department, or friends of police officers, or people who sneak into the police building and use a computer there when nobody's looking. It is secure, and cannot be triggered except from the police station. Yet, in the broader sense of security, the mere fact of the collar's existence around my neck is the absolute opposite of security.
It doesn't really matter how secure they make the algorithms. A system whose purpose is to authoritatively track and identify all individual humans "from above" is insecure, by definition.
Re:Another DRM? (Score:2, Insightful)
But just look at history. A better choice always takes more time to create, and is more expensive to design and implement, but in the long run it pays off much better. Take Unix, most of RSA's products, etc. There's no short cut to success, there is no overnight solution. Its just that a lot of people with power can't simply realize that common fact.
Well, to whoever said common sense was common
Re:Easy to clone (Score:1, Insightful)
Back-off is reasonable except then someone just wanders through Heathrow spamming passports with their 10m-range RFID reader and then nobody flies.
Re:two things (Score:3, Insightful)
2. In the case of basic access control, as specified by ICAO, being able to read the chip means that you are able to clone the chip. It's a weakness in the protocol. Basically the big secret is printed on the passport (passport number, date of birth, expiration date), so it's not difficult to obtain. And even if you don't have physical access to the passport, the key entropy is low, which helps eavesdropping considerably. You don't have to compromise the manufacturer or anything. The big challenge is coming up with a passport book that passes as a real one.
Re:News at 11 (Score:2, Insightful)
Not Cracked, same FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
The passport functioned as designed. The only thing the key is designed to prevent is remote surreptitious downloading of the data from the chip. If you hand someone the passport, what sort of privacy do you expect?
Call me when they can successfully ALTER the chip data and create a valid digital signature. Merely copying the data won't help.
Re:"This doesn't matter" spin (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, until a cloned passport successfully makes it through one of their scanners, we don't know that it can be done. One possibility (though it's probably giving them too much credit to have thought of this) is that the passports actually contain 2 sets of data: one that is readable using all of the known key (as discussed in the article), and a second set that is only readable via a secret key. The purpose of the known key it to provide passport forgers with a red herring. They think "aha...I'm much smarter than them. They thought they had this secure, but they've screwed up, and now I've got the data". Then they clone it, try to get through customs with it, and...the forgery is detected. So now...how did it fail? Did they screw up during the cloning? Who knows?
Its easy to crack a system when you can brute force it in private. It's a lot more difficult when you've got one attempt with someone standing there watching.
Again, I doubt this is the case, but it's a possibility.
Clueless (Score:3, Insightful)
As others above have stated, this is not "cracked" either and they are unable to change the data on the chip. Futhermore they need to read the inside page of the passport to "sniff" for the chip data. I would be happier however, with a contact card rather than contanctless....
So What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How indeed ... (Score:1, Insightful)
By putting the "key", albeit plainly visible as name, date-of-birth and passport-number information, inside the passport, you at least limit access to people who can read the RFID chip *and* physically access the passport.
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well the same is true of the keys used by ATM machines but I don't recall that system ever being cracked. People stole the machines in ram raids, but apparently they still never cracked the bank's transaction network wide open.
Secret keys embedded in hardware that is only used in secure areas of airports with full CCTV and manual security coverage is not really open to the same kind of cracking as, say, the authentication code in the Xing software DVD player. In theory, they are the same. In practice, no way.
And you are assuming there would be only one secret key. Not so - they could have multiply encrypted the data with a hundred private keys and then had each scanner hold 5 of those keys at random. That would be, in practical terms, a strong system - you'd need the codes from the scanners at every airport you wanted to travel through. It would need the next RFID chip up in terms of price, though.
The article points out weaknesses in the scheme which are real and present; how is that FUD?
What's FUD is saying that all theoretically imperfect systems are equivalently bad in practice. It simply isn't true but in any kind of discussion like this on Slashdot someone always pipes up with the same nonsense.
FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
As usual the journalist is confusing everything. What these bozos have done is just read the content of the RFID chip exactly in the same way a custom officer would have done: using the key which is *printed* on the passport !
Basically this chip do what it has been designed for: improve the difficulty to create fake passports.
Now of course you have always some neo-luddites like those who are spreading FUD in order to sway opinions who will never read the details of the article and just remember the passports have been "cracked"
Pityfull
Re:Another DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy to clone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another DRM? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:News at 11 (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the biometric information stored in the chip is digitally signed ! In order to create a fake passport, the counterfeiter would have to obtain the private key used to sign those.
This is not something "impossible" to do, but certainly harder than fake a simple paper passport.
Notice that in the article, the author mention the fact that you could "clone" a passport, not create a fake one: And what the heck will you do with the cloned passport, since you're obviously not the same person on the photo ?