State Department responds to RFID passport comments

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: William Gronim <wwg () andrew cmu edu>
Date: October 26, 2005 9:39:46 AM EDT
To: Multiple recipients of list talk <talk () privacy cs cmu edu>
Subject: PRIVACY:: State Department responds to RFID passport comments
Reply-To: talk () privacy cs cmu edu


Hello.

    The Sate Department has published a detailed response to the  
public comments it received on its proposed RFID passport scheme.  
Almost all (98.5%) of the comments received were negative, and 86% of  
the 2,335 comments concerned privacy and/or security. The Department  
has decided to go forward with the following plan:

    -They will use passive ISO 14443 RFID chips with a capacity of 64K.

   -The binding and cover of the passport will contain shielding  
material to limit the reading of closed or nearly closed passports to  
10cm. The Department claims to have tested the chips in question to  
evaluate how much shielding is needed.

    -The chip will contain: name, nationality, sex, date of birth,  
photograph, passport number, issue date, expiration date, type of  
passport.

    -The chip will use BAC (Basic Access Control) to encrypt chip-to- 
reader communications. BAC is described at [1] pages 8-9. The chip  
stores two keys, one for encryption one for MAC. The keys are derived  
from information in the visual machine readable area of the  
passport:  date of birth, passport number, etc . As pointed out it in  
[1] this has two issues: The keys do not have enough entropy and the  
use of a single lifetime key gives anyone who once read your passport  
permanent access.

    -Passports with broken chips will be considered invalid and  
replaced at no charge.

    -Trial deployments to government employees to begin December 2005.

    The comments are available at http://cryptome.org/dos102505.txt .


    --William Gronim
      wwg () andrew cmu edu

        "We have no future because our present is too volatile."

[1] http://eprint.iacr.org/2005/095.pdf
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