On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
I don't know who *else* has said it, but I've said this repeatedly at conferences. With phased arrays, you should be able to read RFID tags at surprising distances, and in spite of attempts to jam such signals (such as RSA's proposed RFID privacy mechanism).
One thing that I have seen confuse people writing about the new passports is that RFID may mean different technologies. So I'd like to mention that the passports will not use the simple bar-code kind of RFID tags -- they will use chip cards communicating over ISO/IEC 14443.
The current technology has big problems with working at a distance (in fact, the tests done with COTS 14443 readers shows that most have problems with reading passport-like cards even when placed at the optimal distance...), but I don't know enough about antenna technology to be able to guess what can be done by a dedicated attacker...
/Krister
PS. Most of the MRTD (Machine Readable Travel Documents) specifications are available at http://www.icao.int/mrtd/Home/index.cfm.
PPS. Most people on this list seems to be interested in the US passport, so you may be interested in that the US department of state, and department of homeland security, seems to be doing a pilot of the new passport. The RFP is available from: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2004/jul/us-biometric-passport-original.pdf with some consolidated Q and A at http://www.statewatch.org/news/2004/jul/us-biometric-passport-QandA.pdf
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