Security researchers demo RFID chips cloning

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 8 Aug 2006 at 18:01

Security researchers at German firm DN-Systems chose the final day of the Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas to demonstrated how RFID chips can be cloned.

Founder Lukas Grunwald showed attendees how a relatively simple process can clone chips produced to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standard.

According to Wired.com, because the information is not encrypted, reading the data itself is a straightforward scan using an RFID reader with an antennae.

And the barriers to creating a new passport are simply those of acquiring the right equipment and ensuring the data burned onto a new embedded RFID chip matches the template used by ICAO.

The one, and pretty much only, caveat to this access to RFID chips is that the data in these passports is digitally signed. So, although cloning the data is straightforward, it is not possible to modify it.