Back in February, I wrote about some Dutch hackers remotely reading Dutch RFID passports, and my email to the Irish Passport Office enquiring about their plans.
They never bothered writing back; I guess they were too busy implementing the damn things :( Their new ‘ePassports’ are now mandatory for new Irish passports:
The chip technology allows the information stored in an Electronic Passport to be read by special chip readers at a close distance.
“special chip readers at a close distance” and/or “random criminals looking for Irish victims at a distance of 30 feet”, I guess.
Here’s the slides for Riscure’s attack on the Dutch passports. Irish passports are similarly using “Basic Access Control”. I wonder if Irish passport numbers are sequential, since that seems to be a key part of their attack?