practice
Doi: 10.1145/1610252.1610268
Article development led by
queue.acm.org
Do RFID passports make us vulnerable
to identity theft?
BY aLan RamoS, WEina SCott, WiLLiam SCott, DouG LLoYD,
KathERinE o’LEaRY, anD Jim WaLDo
a threat
analysis
of RFiD
Passports
it’S A BeAutiFul day when your plane touches down at
the airport. After a long vacation, you feel rejuvenated,
refreshed, and relaxed. When you get home, everything
is how you left it—the tables, the chairs, even the now-moldy sandwich you forgot on the counter. Everything,
that is, but a pile of envelopes on the floor that jammed
the door as you tried to swing it open.
You notice a blinking light on your answering
machine and realize you’ve missed dozens of
messages. As you click on the machine and pick up
the envelopes, you find that most of the messages and
letters are from debt collectors. Most of the envelopes
are stamped “urgent,” and as you sift through the
pile you can hear the messages from angry creditors
demanding that you call them immediately. Reading
the bank statements, you suddenly
realize that someone has been charging large amounts of money to an
account in your name from a credit
card company you’ve never heard of.
You’ve lost thousands of dollars, and
suddenly you aren’t feeling quite so
relaxed anymore.
How could someone have been
stealing money from you like this while
you were away on vacation? The thievery actually began months before you
even left home. Several months ago,
as you were casually walking through
the airport en route to a business meeting in Europe, someone was lingering close behind. As you approached
a security agent to have your passport
