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.
And, of course, those fragile chips are so vulnerable to damage. Who could blame someone if the memory component was rendered unreadable… accidentally, of course?
[via Reddit]
This could have been a bunch of corrupt official’s plan all along. More money wasted, more chance to snatch a piece of it.
Brilliant !!!
Just another thing to point out how pathetic, poorly organised and out of touch our govt. is, and it’s not just labour, ALL the big three are the same.
Who is the genius over there that declared this “unhackable”? I hope s/he loses their job. Now.
You must be joking! In this country we promote idiots like this
It seems UK is not part of the UE looking at this piece of crap
Ugh. Yet another Doctorow-esque example of why this plan is dying the death it deserves.
Proprietary hardware is just security through obfuscation.
The time has come to galvanize and throw the bums out in 2009 and 2010. USA is coming apart just like the old USSR thanks to the Bush and Clinton families. http://www.mayorgalvan.com
u knw what? here in India v r spending billions on exactly the same project known as Unique Identification Number headed by Nandan Nilekani, I think he should be reading this, Nandan is former CEO of Infosys, IT co. from bangalore, India.
Lord help us.
I find it hard to believe that anyone can hack all websites. We have installed good security and safe guards and am sure we are safe from any hackers.
We enjoyed the article though