Digital Crosstalk

Elvis exposes biometric passport security flaws

Posted by Brian | Filed under blogging

The introduction of biometric passports was supposedly to tighten security and make travellers feel a little safer. But hackers have showed they’re far from foolproof in a CNN report.

In the pursuit of improved security, Adam Laurie and Jeroen Van Beek demonstrated just how easy it is to fool a passport scanner using a fraudulent biometric chip. Checking in at a self-serve passport machine at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport in September 2008, the hacker was able to clear passport control with a faked Elvis Presley passport!

Van Beek said: “What we did for that chip is create passport content for Elvis Presley and put it on a chip and sign it with our own key for a non-existent country. And a device that was used to read chips didn’t check the country’s signatures.”

Biometric passports, which contain data stored on an embedded chip are now standard issue in much of Europe, the United States and in numerous countries around the world but the hackers maintain biometric passports are still vulnerable to fraud.

Related posts:

1. Security worker saves couple’s holiday and averts oven catastrophe