Off-the-shelf components can be used to clone U.S. passports

An information security expert has put together a proof-of-concept device, using just $250 worth of equipment that can be used to sniff and clone RFID tags. The use of a laptop helped make the entire setup portable. In fact, Chris Paget took a 20 minute drive in downtown San Francisco with the gig, and managed to pick up the RFID of two passports without their owner's knowledge.

Paget explained that he built the device to debunk the notion that such attacks are only theoretical in nature. He says, "It's one thing to say that something can be done, it's another thing completely to actually do it. It's mainly to defeat the argument that you can't do it in the real world, that there's no real-world attack here, that it's all theoretical." It wasn't too long ago that the Mifare Classic RFID was successfully hacked, even as industrial backers advocate additional applications of RFID.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at The Register

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