Wireless data is easy to steal. Why did we put it on our passports again?

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Schneier links to an article about RFID passports being cloned in under 5 minutes. The authorities have stopped denying it's possible and have shifted to denying that it can be used for any nefarious purposes.

The UK Home Office however dismissed the ability to get hold of the information on the chip. A spokesman said: "It is hard to see why anyone would want to access the information on the chip. " Other than the photograph, which could be obtained easily by other means, they would gain no information that they did not already have - so the whole exercise would be pointless: the only information stored on the ePassport chip is the basic information you can see on the personal details page."

Well, it sure is hard to see why anyone would want to see someone's credit report, criminal history, medical information, social security card, birth certificate… Are these people for real?

I never thought about it, but it's much easier to defeat TSA security than I realized.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Bruce Schnier found an intereting article in the NY Times about a bored computer science student wrote a webpage that printed nearly identical boarding passes to those used by Northwest Airlines. Using the fake passes, people were successfully able to bypass airport security. The important part of this article, is the fact that the student did no hacking, no cracking, no breaking of any system. All he did was make passes that looked real.

No cryptographic recipe was cracked; no airline computer system was compromised. Without visiting an airport, Mr. Soghoian needed access to nothing other than a public Web site to embarrass those responsible for airport security.

As security professionals have been saying for years, these measures make life difficult for law-abiding citizens, but do little to stop the bad guys.

Oops. Sorry about all your data gosh golly wilikers!

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

Consumer Affairs writes:

A laptop containing the personal information of 328,000 current and former employees of Boeing was stolen in Chicago, according to the company. The laptop theft was the third to befall Boeing in the past twelve months. Boeing is contacting the affected employees by mail and has promised to set up free credit monitoring for them through the Experian credit bureau.