Michael Holstein wrote:
That article focuses on Dutch passports, but in the US it's essentially
the same.
The Passport number
a 10 digit number (I don't know where they start, but it certainly
wasn't 0000000001).
If they're sequential, we only need to know where they start once the
chips are installed, assuming you get a new passport number when you
renew (as you do in th UK).
The Date Of Birth of the holder
about 32,000 possibilities (assuming < 90yrs old)
The Expiry Date of the Passport
Passports are vaild for 10 years (for an adult in the US), and
expiration is just MM/YYYY .. so that's only 120 possibilities.
Currently even less, since, again, it will expire 10 years from the date
chips were first installed, so here in the UK there is only one valid
year so far, so only 12 possibilities.
A very small dictionary for "brute force" indeed, and I'd be happy to
code such a routine.
Thanks for the offer, but I'm already pretty much there... It'll be in
the next release... :)
Does anyone know if the chips in the latest passports (USA issue)
prevent this sort of thing, or can you try keys as fast as the RF
interface will permit?
There is nothing in the standard to require anti-bruteforcing mechanisms
such as timing backoffs etc., and although I haven't done exhaustive
tests on this, trying multiple wrong keys doesn't seem to have any bad
effect on a UK passport.
Using my python library I get about 3 tries per second, but I expect
that speed could be improved...
cheers,
Adam
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