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E-Passports Can Be Hacked and Cloned in Minutes
Posted by Sean Fallon at 9:00 AM on August 7, 2008
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.
Apparently, flying is just too pleasurable an experience, which is why US Airways is getting rid of all in-flight movies and is cancelling plans to test out a new entertainment system in its planes. Wah wahhhh!
All you travellers coming home tomorrow from your wild and crazy Independence Day weekend vacations, don't be one of 12,000 people who lose their laptops at airports every week. That's right, that ain't no typo—12,000 dudes and dudettes somehow manage to misplace their portable computers every seven days. That's 600,000 machines a year, many containing sensitive information that companies need to account for.
The director of the TSA, Kip Hawley, has spoken to the 
The motors inside LiveLuggage's ingenious power-assisted suitcase can turn a 30kg load into something one-tenth of the size. With an anti-gravity handle and force sensors in the wheels, LiveLuggage is hack- and thief-proof and, once charged, the battery will run for a couple of hours. Costing US$1,300, I'm tempted to try one of these just to see what the Homeland Security bods might do when faced with a plastic suitcase boasting built-in electronics. [
While most of us have become fine-oiled machines in working our way through airport security without shoes, belts (and thereby sometimes pants), ripping one's laptop from its safehaven in your bag and placing it, cluckily, in an X-ray tray is never a pleasant experience. Luckily, the TSA has finally decided that laptop bags that meet certain provisions will be considered X-ray friendly. 
On my last day in São Paulo, the good people we were working with on an upcoming Portuguese version of Giz with took us to some nightclub with an open roof and lots of beautiful younger people dancing and making out. Anyhow, here's the gadget party of this story: There was a band there playing called Inimigos da HP, or Enemies of HP. Yes, that HP. Apparently the members started playing together in college, but are mostly former engineers and industrial designers who were forced in their previously not-rockstar life to use HP calcs every day. I like their music. Now I'm in Rio, taking a long weekend. Going to the beach. I should have played more Wii Fit. [
At the end of last week, Qantas revealed that it would be offering in-flight Net access on domestic flights by the end of the year. The service will appear first on domestic B767-300 and A330-200 aircraft.
The Ulysses spacecraft, which was launched way back in 1990, has been visiting the planets of the solar system for some 17-years, but now the Ulysses looks like it is doomed. A critical error has occurred in the mechanism that prevents the fuel from freezing, and that means the Ulysses is soon to be heading to spacecraft heaven.
