Tests conducted for the UK’s Times Online have concluded that the new high-tech e-passports being distributed around the world can be hacked and cloned within minutes. A computer researcher proved it by cloning the chips in two British passports and then implanting digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. Both passports passed as genuine by UN approved passport reader software. The entire process took less than an hour.
For some reason, Samsung SDI and German company Bundesdruckerei think that their new passport with a 700µm (tiny) polycarbonate data page, which contains an active matrix bendable 300µm (really tiny) OLED display—capable of displaying video or text regarding the passport holder—is the next thing in border security.
Today Western Digital introduced its newly redesigned My Passport Essential drives, in capacities of 160, 250 and 320GB, that last one priced at a very pleasant US$200. The shiny bus-powered drives don’t pack anything unusual, but they do come with WD Sync for easy Windows backup and 128-bit encryption. [WD]
