Last Friday, the U.S. government unveiled its National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, a blueprint for the private-industry development of voluntary tools that would authenticate and consolidate your identity online. We need such a thing, the government says — in a pamphlet titled, well, "Why We Need It" — because our proliferating online passwords are inconvenient and insecure, and because last year 8.1 million adults in the U.S. suffered identity theft or fraud, at a cost of $37 billion. The idea seems like one mandated by the moment. Increasingly, important commerce, ... Read More
An ePassport is a Fiendishly Slippery Thing
March 24, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
When America and the EU introduced "ePassports" in the mid-2000s, the documents had no security, not even basic encryption, which meant that the holder's details were being offered up to the world at large. The passports had RFID chips to let machines read basic information, including photos and fingerprints, and for the first time in history, a traveler — at least in theory — could have his identity details "skimmed" by any hacker wielding a fairly cheap RFID receiver. Use of RFID, or radio-frequency identification, has exploded over the last few years. The chips turn up in ... Read More
