Affiliations: [a] Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean, Syros GR-84100, Greece. E-mail: dlek@aegean.gr | [b] Information Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection Research Group, Department of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), 76 Patission Ave., Athens GR-10434, Greece. E-mail: dgrit@aueb.gr
Abstract: Millions of citizens around the world have already acquired their new electronic passport. The e-passport is equipped with contactless communication capability, as well as with an Integrated Circuit Chip enabling cryptographic functionality. Countries are required to build a national Public Key Infrastructure to support digital signatures, as this is considered the basic mechanism to prove the authenticity and integrity of the Machine Readable Travel Documents. The first, large-scale, worldwide PKI is currently under construction, by means of bilateral trust relationships between Countries. In this paper, we propose a set of good practices, which are essential for the establishment of a global identification scheme based on e-passports, together with an analysis of the security and privacy issues that may arise. We argue that an e-passport may also be exploited in other applications as a globally interoperable PKI-enabled tamperproof device. The preconditions, the benefits and the drawbacks of using e-passports in everyday electronic activities are further analyzed and assessed.
