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INNER WORKINGS The data used to encrypt the BAC communication can be read electronically from the bottom of the passport called the machine readable zone. Because physical access to the passport is assumed to be needed to know this part of the passport it is assumed that the owner of the passport has given permission to read the passport. Equipment for optically scanning this part of the passport is already widely used. It uses an OCR system to read the text which is printed in a standardized format. SECURITY The Basic Access Control mechanism has been criticized as offering to little protection from unauthorized interception. Researchers claim that because there are only limited amounts of passport issued many theoretically possible passport numbers will not be in use in practice. And there are ages in theory that no passport carrying human has in practice. This is because children typically do not request passports and some ages are beyond a normal human lifespan. In other words, the data used as an encryption key has a low Entropy . It is claimed this brings intercepted but Encrypted data in the reach of a modest Brute Force Attack . This effect increases when passport numbers are issued sequentially or contain a redundant Checksum . Both are proven to be the case in passports issued by the Netherlands . There are other factors that can be potentially used to speed up a brute force attack. There is the fact that dates of birth are typically not distributed randomly in populations. Dates of birth may be distributed even less randomly for the segments of a population that pass for example a check in desk at an airport. And the fact that passports are often not issued on all days of the week and during all weeks of a year. Therefore not all theoretically possible expiration dates may get used. SOURCES
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