A survey of system security in contactless electronic passports

A traditional paper-based passport contains a Machine-Readable Zone (MRZ) and a Visual Inspection Zone (VIZ). The MRZ has two lines of the holder’s personal data, document data, and verification characters encoded using Optical Character Recognition font B (OCR-B). The encoded data include the holder’s name, date of birth, and other identity information of the holder. The VIZ contains the holder’s photo with signature and is usually placed on the data page of a paper passport. However, the MRZ and VIZ can be easily duplicated with normal document reproduction technology to produce a fake passport which can pass traditional verification. Neither of these features actively verify the holder’s identity; nor do they bind the holder’s identity to the document in a fool proof way. A passport also contains blank pages for visa stamps and country entry or exit dates. Any of this information can be easily altered to produce fake permissions and travel records. The electronic passport, supporting authentication using secure credentials on a tamper-resistant chip, is an attempt to improve the security of paper-based passport at minimum cost. This paper surveys security mechanisms built in first-generation electronic passports and compares them with second-generation passports. It analyzes and describes the cryptographic protocols used in Basic Access Control (BAC) and Extended Access Control (EAC).