[1]: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/digital-id-upda...
A fake photo plus a valid barcode will pass any current check right? Unless you still do a secondary proprietary photo lookup that I don’t think exists.
Cryptographic NFC chips are basically free these days, and any modern smartphone can read them. The photo issue is solved by having the chip contain a copy of the photo, as a few extra kilobytes of data isn't an issue when you aren't using barcodes. The copy issue is solved by having the chip sign a verifier-provided nonce together with the data, and having the government sign the chip's public key instead.
Digital verification is going to matter a lot more for objects we own rather than the objects that proxy for that (currently the main function of an ID). Identity fraud is only problematic because ownership is tied to a loose record of SIN/DL.
Having a physical medium represent ownership just shifts the burden to the state and allows for social engineering and fraud to persist.
recovering the signing keys for US driver's license barcodes
Anyway. I only see claims that the public key can be determined from license barcodes, not that a signing key can be determined. What am I missing or misunderstanding?
To head off one potential retort: While it's true that one can use a public key to encrypt data for the recipient that has the private half of that key or verify that data has been signed by the possessor of the private half of that key, I'm almost 100% certain that it's not possible to use that public key to sign data would validate to other folks as being signed by the private half of that key. It has been more than a decade since I've thought about any of this, but isn't the entire point of public-key cryptography that the public part can be distributed to your worst enemy without causing you any trouble at all?
NFC and a challenge-response protocol could work, though, like e.g. the one used in biometric passports.
I hate shit like this. Do not let your crypto layer know about the structure of what it's signing. Keep security stupid.
When you look at the details underneath more crypto, there is a lot of ah hah - and ‘doh’ - moments due to implementation realities.
It's not like non-technical people understand asymmetric cryptography. Or even technical people, for that matter.
Maybe we should refer to the public key as an address, and the private key is just a password again. You can send stuff, securely, to an address. And you can verify the sender when you have their address (ie check the signature).
The public counterpart is tricky to name but I think attaching "public" to it makes the intended usage plenty clear. There isn't really a physical counterpart unless you consider maybe those machines that check for counterfeit cash but even that's not a great fit because the pubkey is simultaneously analogous to a lock box.
I don’t think there’s any process or entity in the physical world that is reasonably familiar to most people that is even remotely suitable as an analogy to public key cryptography.
> These are public keys, which are meant to be published - recovering one lets anyone check a signature, not forge one.