Australian ePassport: The Brits Have Hacked It

December 13, 2006: The Australian Government says the new Australian Passports with their included security chip, are more resilient then ever. But a reader and software program developed by a British hacker is out to prove them wrong.

The British security expert, Adam Laurie, is currently on a mission to break the hopes of government officials across the globe. It all started when he was commissioned by the UK based Guardian to attempt to hack the UK’s latest passport, already in use by over three million citizens. The Guardian reported that Laurie had easily obtained ‘secure’ data and biometric information from UK passports and displayed the results on a laptop.

Laurie has now demonstrated his work to the ABC who reported last week that Laurie was able to use the Australia ePassport’s embedded chip to break through the security protection and access stored data.

By centralising so much information on the supposedly secure document, Laurie told the ABC he believes Australian citizens are open to identity theft. Identity thieves could easily develop their own system, hold the reader just inches away from their target and obtain passport data from Australian carrying the documents in their back pocket, handbag or money belt. With the passport still in their possession, the holder would not even know they had been attacked.

To make the scenario even scarier, just add biometrics such as fingerprints to the passport documents. That way identity thieves could use the system to also obtain stored biometric data that could further the consequences of identity theft.

Laurie has since told the Sydney Morning Herald he is currently developing the means to obtaining the data at a distance.

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