Cloning RFID Passports in Five Minutes
It’s getting mainstream attention; here’s an article from the BBC.
Entries Tagged "ID cards"
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Buying Fake European Passports
Interesting story of a British journalist buying 20 different fake EU passports. She bought a genuine Czech passport with a fake name and her real picture, a fake Latvian passport, and a stolen Estonian passport.
Despite information on stolen passports being registered to a central Interpol database, her Estonian passport goes undetected.
Note that harder-to-forge RFID passports would only help in one instance; it’s certainly not the most important problem to solve.
Also, I am somewhat suspicious of this story. I don’t know about the UK laws, but in the US this would be a major crime—and I don’t think being a reporter would be an adequate defense.
Notary Fraud
Many countries have the concept of a “notary public.” Their training and authority varies from country to country; in the United States, their primary role is to witness the signature of legal documents. Many important legal documents require notarization in addition to a signature, primarily as a security device.
When I get a document notarized, I present my photo ID to a notary public. Generally, I go to my local bank, where many of the employees are notary publics and I don’t have to pay a fee for the service. I sign the document while the notary watches, and he then signs an attestation to the fact that he saw me sign it. He doesn’t read the document; that’s not his job. And then I send my notarized document to whoever needed it: another bank, the patent office, my mortgage company, whatever.
It’s an eminently hackable system. Sure, you can always present a fake ID—I’ll bet my bank employee has never seen a West Virginia driver’s license, for example—but that takes work. The easiest way to hack the system is through social engineering.
Bring a small pile of documents to be notarized. In the middle of the pile, slip in a document with someone else’s signature. Since he’s busy with his own signing and stamping—and you’re engaging him in slightly distracting conversation—he’s probably not going to notice that he’s notarizing something “someone else” signed. If he does, apologize for your honest mistake and try again elsewhere.
Of course, you’re better off visiting a notary who charges by the document: he’ll be more likely to appreciate the stack of documents you’ve brought to him and less likely to ask questions. And pick a location—not like a bank—that isn’t filled with security cameras.
Of course, this won’t be enough if the final recipient of the document checks the signature; you’re on your own when it comes to forgery. And in my state the notary has to keep a record of the document he signs; this one won’t be in his records if he’s ever asked. But if you need to switch the deed on a piece of property, change ownership of a bank account, or give yourself power of attorney over someone else, hacking the notary system makes the job a lot easier.
Anyone know how often this kind of thing happens in real life?
RFID Passports Less Reliable than Traditional Passports
From EPIC:
A document obtained by EPIC from the State Department reveals that 2004 government tests found passports with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that are read 27% to 43% less successfully than the previous Machine Readable Zone technology (two lines of text printed at the bottom of the first page of a passport).
I’ve written about RFID passports before.
UK RFID Passport Cracked
EDITED TO ADD (11/17): Commentary by Bruce Sterling.
FIDIS on RFID Passports
The “Budapest Declaration on Machine Readable Travel Documents“:
Abstract:
By failing to implement an appropriate security architecture, European governments have effectively forced citizens to adopt new international Machine Readable Travel Documents which dramatically decrease their security and privacy and increases risk of identity theft. Simply put, the current implementation of the European passport utilises technologies and standards that are poorly conceived for its purpose. In this declaration, researchers on Identity and Identity Management (supported by a unanimous move in the September 2006 Budapest meeting of the FIDIS “Future of Identity in the Information Society” Network of Excellence[1]) summarise findings from an analysis of MRTDs and recommend corrective measures which need to be adopted by stakeholders in governments and industry to ameliorate outstanding issues.
EDITED TO ADD (11/9): Slashdot thread.
Forge Your Own Boarding Pass
Last week Christopher Soghoian created a Fake Boarding Pass Generator website, allowing anyone to create a fake Northwest Airlines boarding pass: any name, airport, date, flight. This action got him visited by the FBI, who later came back, smashed open his front door, and seized his computers and other belongings. It resulted in calls for his arrest—the most visible by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts)—who has since recanted. And it’s gotten him more publicity than he ever dreamed of.
All for demonstrating a known and obvious vulnerability in airport security involving boarding passes and IDs.
This vulnerability is nothing new. There was an article on CSOonline from February 2006. There was an article on Slate from February 2005. Sen. Chuck Schumer spoke about it as well. I wrote about it in the August 2003 issue of Crypto-Gram. It’s possible I was the first person to publish it, but I certainly wasn’t the first person to think of it.
It’s kind of obvious, really. If you can make a fake boarding pass, you can get through airport security with it. Big deal; we know.
You can also use a fake boarding pass to fly on someone else’s ticket. The trick is to have two boarding passes: one legitimate, in the name the reservation is under, and another phony one that matches the name on your photo ID. Use the fake boarding pass in your name to get through airport security, and the real ticket in someone else’s name to board the plane.
This means that a terrorist on the no-fly list can get on a plane: He buys a ticket in someone else’s name, perhaps using a stolen credit card, and uses his own photo ID and a fake ticket to get through airport security. Since the ticket is in an innocent’s name, it won’t raise a flag on the no-fly list.
You can also use a fake boarding pass instead of your real one if you have the “SSSS” mark and want to avoid secondary screening, or if you don’t have a ticket but want to get into the gate area.
Historically, forging a boarding pass was difficult. It required special paper and equipment. But since Alaska Airlines started the trend in 1999, most airlines now allow you to print your boarding pass using your home computer and bring it with you to the airport. This program was temporarily suspended after 9/11, but was quickly brought back because of pressure from the airlines. People who print the boarding passes at home can go directly to airport security, and that means fewer airline agents are required.
Airline websites generate boarding passes as graphics files, which means anyone with a little bit of skill can modify them in a program like Photoshop. All Soghoian’s website did was automate the process with a single airline’s boarding passes.
Soghoian claims that he wanted to demonstrate the vulnerability. You could argue that he went about it in a stupid way, but I don’t think what he did is substantively worse than what I wrote in 2003. Or what Schumer described in 2005. Why is it that the person who demonstrates the vulnerability is vilified while the person who describes it is ignored? Or, even worse, the organization that causes it is ignored? Why are we shooting the messenger instead of discussing the problem?
As I wrote in 2005: “The vulnerability is obvious, but the general concepts are subtle. There are three things to authenticate: the identity of the traveler, the boarding pass and the computer record. Think of them as three points on the triangle. Under the current system, the boarding pass is compared to the traveler’s identity document, and then the boarding pass is compared with the computer record. But because the identity document is never compared with the computer record—the third leg of the triangle—it’s possible to create two different boarding passes and have no one notice. That’s why the attack works.”
The way to fix it is equally obvious: Verify the accuracy of the boarding passes at the security checkpoints. If passengers had to scan their boarding passes as they went through screening, the computer could verify that the boarding pass already matched to the photo ID also matched the data in the computer. Close the authentication triangle and the vulnerability disappears.
But before we start spending time and money and Transportation Security Administration agents, let’s be honest with ourselves: The photo ID requirement is no more than security theater. Its only security purpose is to check names against the no-fly list, which would still be a joke even if it weren’t so easy to circumvent. Identification is not a useful security measure here.
Interestingly enough, while the photo ID requirement is presented as an antiterrorism security measure, it is really an airline-business security measure. It was first implemented after the explosion of TWA Flight 800 over the Atlantic in 1996. The government originally thought a terrorist bomb was responsible, but the explosion was later shown to be an accident.
Unlike every other airplane security measure—including reinforcing cockpit doors, which could have prevented 9/11—the airlines didn’t resist this one, because it solved a business problem: the resale of non-refundable tickets. Before the photo ID requirement, these tickets were regularly advertised in classified pages: “Round trip, New York to Los Angeles, 11/21-30, male, $100.” Since the airlines never checked IDs, anyone of the correct gender could use the ticket. Airlines hated that, and tried repeatedly to shut that market down. In 1996, the airlines were finally able to solve that problem and blame it on the FAA and terrorism.
So business is why we have the photo ID requirement in the first place, and business is why it’s so easy to circumvent it. Instead of going after someone who demonstrates an obvious flaw that is already public, let’s focus on the organizations that are actually responsible for this security failure and have failed to do anything about it for all these years. Where’s the TSA’s response to all this?
The problem is real, and the Department of Homeland Security and TSA should either fix the security or scrap the system. What we’ve got now is the worst security system of all: one that annoys everyone who is innocent while failing to catch the guilty.
This essay—my 30th for Wired.com—appeared today.
EDITED TO ADD (11/4): More news and commentary.
EDITED TO ADD (1/10): Great essay by Matt Blaze.
DHS Privacy Committee Recommends Against RFID Cards
The Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee of the Department of Homeland Security recommended against putting RFID chips in identity cards. It’s only a draft report, but what it says is so controversial that a vote on the final report is being delayed.
Executive Summary:
Automatic identification technologies like RFID have valuable uses, especially in connection with tracking things for purposes such as inventory management. RFID is particularly useful where it can be embedded within an object, such as a shipping container.
There appear to be specific, narrowly defined situations in which RFID is appropriate for human identification. Miners or firefighters might be appropriately identified using RFID because speed of identification is at a premium in dangerous situations and the need to verify the connection between a card and bearer is low.
But for other applications related to human beings, RFID appears to offer little benefit when compared to the consequences it brings for privacy and data integrity. Instead, it increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security. Most difficult and troubling is the situation in which RFID is ostensibly used for tracking objects (medicine containers, for example), but can be in fact used for monitoring human behavior. These types of uses are still being explored and remain difficult to predict.
For these reasons, we recommend that RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings. When DHS does choose to use RFID to identify and track individuals, we recommend the implementation of the specific security and privacy safeguards described herein.
Screening People with Clearances
Why should we waste time at airport security, screening people with U.S. government security clearances? This perfectly reasonable question was asked recently by Robert Poole, director of transportation studies at The Reason Foundation, as he and I were interviewed by WOSU Radio in Ohio.
Poole argued that people with government security clearances, people who are entrusted with U.S. national security secrets, are trusted enough to be allowed through airport security with only a cursory screening. They’ve already gone through background checks, he said, and it would be more efficient to concentrate screening resources on everyone else.
To someone not steeped in security, it makes perfect sense. But it’s a terrible idea, and understanding why teaches us some important security lessons.
The first lesson is that security is a system. Identifying someone’s security clearance is a complicated process. People with clearances don’t have special ID cards, and they can’t just walk into any secured facility. A clearance is held by a particular organization—usually the organization the person works for—and is transferred by a classified message to other organizations when that person travels on official business.
Airport security checkpoints are not set up to receive these clearance messages, so some other system would have to be developed.
Of course, it makes no sense for the cleared person to have his office send a message to every airport he’s visiting, at the time of travel. Far easier is to have a centralized database of people who are cleared. But now you have to build this database. And secure it. And ensure that it’s kept up to date.
Or maybe we can create a new type of ID card: one that identifies people with security clearances. But that also requires a backend database and a card that can’t be forged. And clearances can be revoked at any time, so there needs to be some way of invalidating cards automatically and remotely.
Whatever you do, you need to implement a new set of security procedures at airport security checkpoints to deal with these people. The procedures need to be good enough that people can’t spoof it. Screeners need to be trained. The system needs to be tested.
What starts out as a simple idea—don’t waste time searching people with government security clearances—rapidly becomes a complicated security system with all sorts of new vulnerabilities.
The second lesson is that security is a trade-off. We don’t have infinite dollars to spend on security. We need to choose where to spend our money, and we’re best off if we spend it in ways that give us the most security for our dollar.
Given that very few Americans have security clearances, and that speeding them through security wouldn’t make much of a difference to anyone else standing in line, wouldn’t it be smarter to spend the money elsewhere? Even if you’re just making trade-offs about airport security checkpoints, I would rather take the hundreds of millions of dollars this kind of system could cost and spend it on more security screeners and better training for existing security screeners. We could both speed up the lines and make them more effective.
The third lesson is that security decisions are often based on subjective agenda. My guess is that Poole has a security clearance—he was a member of the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000—and is annoyed that he is being subjected to the same screening procedures as the other (clearly less trusted) people he is forced to stand in line with. From his perspective, not screening people like him is obvious. But objectively it’s not.
This issue is no different than searching airplane pilots, something that regularly elicits howls of laughter among amateur security watchers. What they don’t realize is that the issue is not whether we should trust pilots, airplane maintenance technicians or people with clearances. The issue is whether we should trust people who are dressed as pilots, wear airplane-maintenance-tech IDs or claim to have clearances.
We have two choices: Either build an infrastructure to verify their claims, or assume that they’re false. And with apologies to pilots, maintenance techs and people with clearances, it’s cheaper, easier and more secure to search you all.
This is my twenty-eighth essay for Wired.com.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.