2 ms·

Yes, but this still means a attacker needs to have physical access to the passport?

• tialaramex 1y ago
  They need to know the information which functions as key. Because many people don't trust government secrets, the information used for this purpose on a passport is actually just facts about you which were already printed in your passport, plus the passport number. The machine summarises these in a "Machine readable zone" but they're nothing you didn't know. For a random traveller you can probably guess roughly how old they are, which is a few bits for the date-of-birth, and maybe you could strike up conversation and discover their name (or maybe it's printed on baggage, called out by fellow travellers etc.) but yeah it'll be very hard For a very well known person you can likely discover everything except the passport number and you might get a decent guess at that from knowing roughly when it would be issued.
  • lukan 1y ago
    "For a very well known person you can likely discover everything except the passport number and you might get a decent guess at that from knowing roughly when it would be issued." From a very well known person you could probably also steal everything you need directly, if your purpose is to create damage.
• wkat4242 1y ago
  Kinda the same as with the NFC. You can read from a small distance, probably further than you can read an NFC tag with your phone. And you can automate both on a phone (OCR and NFC)