The New Swiss Passport

Post by 1letterunixname » Mon, Aug 21, 2023, 12:50 PM UTC

roobs wrote: post #15

Guvante wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are already RFID enabled (at least US ones have been for years). You would want a paper version as a backup anyway in case the electronics fail.

The "paper version" is still required - the RFID is authenticated with information from the passport. The idea is at a border the passport itself will be scanned, OCR'd (from the data in the machine-readable zone) and then that information will be used to read the information + signature from the RFID chip to authenticate the document.

No, you're wrong. The person's passport number is a primary key into the issuer's database of valid documents as the ultimate source of truth. The RFID is another means in case the paper version wasn't legible, but at the expense of over-communicating details.

Post by netsharc » Mon, Aug 21, 2023, 10:20 PM UTC

extraduder_ire wrote: post #16

patch_cable wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me really wants to try this. Part of me is terrified of scanning my passport with an app I have just heard of.

I just checked fdroid, and this app seems to work: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.tananaev.passportreader/ Strangely, to decrypt the data off the passport you need the passport number, the date of birth, and the expiry date. I assume this is why that playstore app needs to get a photo of your passport. Sure enough, my phone could read off other details about me including my photo after a few seconds of reading.…

[1] says the decryption key is derived from those pieces of information, and the key derivation logic is public info, e.g. [2] is an implementation.

It's somewhat clever, if someone takes a photo of the first page, they already have your personal info, to steal it from the chip they still need to have visual on the info on that page.

[1] https://randomoracle.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/reading-the-us...

[2] https://github.com/AndyQ/NFCPassportReader/blob/main/Example...

Re: The New Swiss Passport

Re: The New Swiss Passport