The cryptography behind electronic passports

Summary: Electronic passports are embedded devices with a filesystem, access controls, and cryptographic protocols specified in ICAO Doc 9303, using short-range RFID (ISO 14443) readable at 10–15 centimeters while eavesdropping is possible at distances of several meters. The original basic access control (BAC) derives keys from the machine readable zone using SHA-1, and the blog states it fails to achieve any of its security objectives because the MRZ is low-entropy and a single captured exchange allows offline brute-forcing.
Bottom line: Passports stay in circulation for 5–10 years, so legacy mechanisms like BAC keep operating alongside newer ones - and the private key behind a country's Country Signing Certificate Authority can issue legitimate passports containing arbitrary data.

Read the original at Trail of Bits Blog ↗