UK's 'unhackable' national ID card hacked in 12 minutes

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: August 7, 2009 2:08:38 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] UK's 'unhackable' national ID card hacked in 12  
minutes

UK’s “unhackable” national ID card hacked in 12 minutes
by Devin Coldewey on August 6, 2009
<http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/08/06/uks-unhackable-national-id-card-hacked-in-12-minutes/ 
>
Remember the national ID cards the UK spent billions on, then forgot  
to distribute readers for? Well, there’s another bump on that  
particular road, namely that the security around your private  
information is about on the level of “cookie jar.” A hacker with a  
phone and laptop, hired by a UK newspaper, cloned the card within a  
few minutes, then wrote new content onto it: “I am a terrorist — shoot  
on sight.” Imagine if that showed up on the checkpoint scanner while  
you were going through customs. Guess it’s lucky they don’t have the  
scanners yet!

This is only the latest misstep in the unpopular and poorly-managed  
national ID program over there. It’s really simple, guys. No critical  
information should be able to be skimmed from the ID. If you must put  
it digitally on the card, there’s enough space in a 128KB memory chip  
to fit a picture, all relevant information, and have it all encoded  
with 128-bit encryption only decodable by proprietary hardware with  
line of sight.

[snip]RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>




-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com