Brute Force

47

I looked around his workshop. He might have embraced the new technology, but not with open arms. He wasn't working in a stainless-steel hyper-tech bubble, that was for sure. It looked like all his equipment had been salvaged from skips and second-hand shops. Still, if it did the job . . .

'We've brought the usual selection of passport photos, but he hasn't had time to get a new name for himself—'

'Not a problem any more, old son. Do you have yours handy?'

I handed it over.

Brendan waved at Lynn. 'And does your friend have a shot of himself looking like—' he glanced down at a scrappy bit of A4 – 'like Mr Adrian William Letts?'

He took the selection of Woolies' photo-booth pictures from Lynn and gave them the once-over. 'And so he does, thank you. Now, Exhibit A.' He beamed at my passport as if he had just taken hold of yet another new grandchild. 'Supposedly the very pinnacle of travel documentation, brought out after 9/11 to satisfy the US State Department's demands. But in its unseemly haste to dance to their tune, the Passport Agency failed to introduce adequate security measures.'

He might have been the world's oldest man, and the most minging, but he was both an artist and craftsman. Even his language and his facial expressions changed once he got into full flow. 'They say there's a secure microchip in here. But weak encryption, plus lack of basic radio shielding, has produced a chip that can be read by electronic eavesdroppers.'

He grinned. 'Some of my ill-intentioned ilk struggled, but it took me just two weeks to figure out how to clone it. The authorities didn't exactly make it hard for me. They posted the standards for e-passports on several websites – including the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations body that developed the standard.'

He opened the passport. 'Inside, as you see, is a laminated page containing the holder's picture, passport number, name, nationality, sex, signature, date and place of birth, and the document's issue and expiry date. Nothing special so far.

'But at the bottom of the page are two lines of printed numbers and letters, which can be read by a computer when the passport is swiped at the MRZ – the Machine Readable Zone – at the immigration desk.'

He flipped it over. 'The RFID, the Radio Frequency Identification microchip, is right here, surrounded by a coil of copper-coloured wire.'

He shook his head in disbelief. 'Governments claim the new biometric chips can only be read over a distance of two centimetres, but I'm reliably informed those in British passports can be read from over a metre away. I don't know anyone who's done that yet, but we've contacted chips at thirty centimetres. That's twelve inches in old money.

'Me and Leena have a day out at Heathrow now and again with the reader in her handbag. You can buy one off the internet for two hundred quid. It takes around four seconds to suck out the information and Bob's your uncle. So there's no more need to chat up strange men in bars . . .'

Brendan giggled away to himself as he handed back my passport and cracked open another packet of his beloved HobNobs. Lynn suddenly looked more animated than he had done all day. 'What's in the chip that's so worthwhile getting at?'

'Ah, there are three important files. One contains an electronic copy of the printed information on the passport's photo page. The second holds the electronic image of the holder. The third is a security device which checks that the previous two files haven't been accessed and altered.

'The government says the biometric chips are protected by what they call an advanced digital encryption technique. In other words, without the MRZ key code it is impossible to steal the passport holder's details if you do not have their travel document.

'They're talking bollocks, of course.' He laughed so hard that flecks of HobNob flew out of his mouth to join the rest of the shit on the carpet. 'The first big flaw is that someone like me can try to access the chip as many times as he likes until he cracks the MRZ code, unlike, say, putting a pin number into an ATM machine, where the security system refuses access after three wrong attempts.

'The second flaw is that there are easily identifiable recurring patterns in the MRZ key codes. Bizarrely, the ICAO suggested that the key needed to access the data on the chips should be comprised of the passport number, the holder's date of birth and the expiry date, in that order. That's about as secure as living in a bank vault but leaving the key under the mat.

'I got myself a helper, a young computer whiz-kid, and he developed a brute-force program that repeatedly tries different combinations of data to discover a password. The old programs could take months, but not any more. Those Indian fellers are smart, aren't they? Once Leena has sucked out six or seven passports from the tube I can crack the MRZ in a couple of days, four at the most.'

He chuckled away to himself. 'Brute force, now that's the way to crack a nut, eh, Nick?'

'Every time, Brendan.'

He got back into work mode. 'But remember, information cannot be added to a cloned chip, so anyone using it to make a counterfeit passport will have to use a picture that bears a reasonable resemblance to the previous owner. Sure, there are facial recognition systems in the chip – precise measurements of key points on your face and head – but they are not yet in operation. In any case, the technology throws up between 20 and 25 per cent false negatives or false positives. It won't be reliable for years to come.'

He beamed at Lynn. 'Adrian's got the same hairstyle as your good self.'

He got back to his waffle. 'So it's down to the Mark 1 human eyeball at airports and such like. People have great difficulty matching faces to pictures, even trained immigration officials. That's why photographs have never been introduced on credit cards. As long as your friend here bears a fair resemblance to the person on the chip – or grows a beard – he'll get through a border post. Or your money back.' He laughed again, but we didn't get hit by Hob Nob shrapnel this time. 'The beauty of it is that nobody knows that their passport is being cloned. Nobody's reported their passport stolen. After all, they still have it.'

He stood up and held out a hand. 'So that'll be half now and the rest tomorrow morning . . .'

I peeled off the dollars. 'Jesus, Brendan. Money for old rope.'

He allowed himself another giggle. 'I know, son, I know. I only wish I was thirty years younger; I'd have such fun with all this new technology. I've just got into cloning those Oyster cards everyone seems to be using – piece of piss! You fellers want a couple?'

'No, we're OK, mate. Off tomorrow, remember?'

He pocketed the down payment and started rummaging about in his desk drawer. 'It gets better. You know the ID card scheme your Gordon Brown is so keen on? It'll use the same technology. So I'll have access to around fifty pieces of information about you: your name, age, all your addresses, your national insurance number and biometric details; everything a feller could possibly need.'

He pulled out a signature tablet, the type used in US stores to check signatures electronically.

'Now, Mr Letts. If you would just sign your name . . .'