Keys Not Included: Recovering the Keys That Sign the Barcodes on US Driver's Licenses

A publication titled “Keys Not Included” examines the recovery of the cryptographic keys used to sign the barcodes on driver's licenses in the US. The piece was written by Ryan Fahey.

The title points to the very heart of the problem: keys that were supposed to remain private turned out to be obtainable. What's at stake is the digital signature mechanism built into the machine-readable barcodes on licenses — the part of the document that, by design, confirms the authenticity of the data recorded on it.

The piece drew notable interest in the professional community: on Hacker News it collected 97 points and 29 comments, which speaks to the topic's relevance for information security specialists.

Unfortunately, the full text of the article could not be obtained, so the technical details of the key recovery, as well as the author's conclusions about the implications for the document verification system, remain beyond the scope of this note. The original publication is available at the link below.

Source: Hacker News