A Note on the Relay Attacks on e-passports: The Case of Czech e-passports

Martin Hlavac; Tomas Rosa

Paper 2007/244

A Note on the Relay Attacks on e-passports: The Case of Czech e-passports

Martin Hlavac and Tomas Rosa

Abstract

The threat of relay attacks on authentication protocols is often well recognized, especially for contactless applications like RFID chips. It is, therefore, a bit surprising to meet an implementation that actually encourages rather than eliminates these attacks. We present our experimental observations concerning Czech e-passports. These show clearly an inherent weakness rooted in lower layers of ISO 14443. As the behavior is unavoidable, it induces a question on whether the e-passport should not have used a different communication protocol or authentication scheme.

Note: The revision fixes several typos (FWT vs. FTW, $36 \mu s$ vs. $36 ms$, invalid reference to conclusion), adds explanation of ATQB and changes "RF channel 2" to "channel 2" in the figure.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Implementation
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Unknown where it was published
Keywords: RFID e-passport relay attack
Contact author(s): hlavm1am @ artax karlin mff cuni cz
History: 2007-06-24: revised; 2007-06-19: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2007/244
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2007/244,
      author = {Martin Hlavac and Tomas Rosa},
      title = {A Note on the Relay Attacks on e-passports: The Case of Czech e-passports},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2007/244},
      year = {2007},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2007/244}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2007/244}
}