Hackers crash e-passport readers — stage set for exploits

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wireless

Lukas Grunwald — last seen cloning Germany’s RFID passports — is back with more “white hat” hackery on the worlds’ new e-passport systems. This time, however, he’s crashing RFID readers to demonstrate how a hacked passport could conceivably force approval of expired or forged passports. After all, “If you’re able to crash something you are most likely able to exploit it,” says Grunwald. Lukas was able to crash two passport readers made by different vendors by first cloning a passport’s chip and then modding the JPEG2000 image file stored within the chip to create a buffer-overun condition — the same vulnerabilities which make so many devices (the original Xbox, anyone?) so easily exploitable. Lukas contends that all airport readers are likely vulnerable to such an exploit as they would be using off-the-shelf libraries for decoding JPEG images. Lukas will be demonstrating his latest hack this weekend at DefCon in Vegas. Hmmm, with CES moving to RFID badges this year, we have a funny feeling that attendance is going to be way up.