Risk: Informational
Home Office Minister, Joan Ryan, confidently assured the British public in July 2006 that: "We are determined that the British Passport will remain one of the most secure in the world, and a document that can be relied on by British travellers wherever they go." ePassports have come under a lot of flack for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the chips were cracked by Lukas Grunwald, CTO of a German security consultancy last year; then it was revealed that the chips only have a two year warranty yet they're used in 10 year passports, and now there's another criticism - a passport's chip can be cracked whilst the passport is still in its delivery envelope.
The Daily Mail recently performed an experiment to crack a new ePassport and succeeded in under four hours, copying the personal details and photograph held on the passport's chip and printed on the passport.
The experiment was brought to the attention of the Home Office and a spokesman commented: "We do not believe it would be possible to successfully forge a new passport by doing this. The security around the UK passport chip prevents anyone changing or deleting any of the data or information on the chip, which is what is required to successfully forge a passport."
The full Daily Mail article makes an interesting read and is available at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=440069&in_page_id=1770