Basic Access Control

Basic access control (BAC) is a mechanism specified to ensure only authorized parties can wirelessly read personal information from passports with an RFID chip. It uses data such as the passport number, date of birth and expiration date to negotiate a session key. This key can then be used to encrypt the communication between the passports chip and a reading device. This mechanism is intended to ensure that the owner of a passport can decide who can read the electronic contents of the passport. This mechanism was first introduced into the German passport on 1 November 2005 (correction; Norway started to use this 3 October 2005, Sweeden started also to use this in October 2005) and is now also used in many other countries (e.g., United States passports since August 2007).

Read more about Basic Access Control:  Inner Workings, Security

Famous quotes containing the words basic, access and/or control:

    It is not an exaggeration to say that play is as basic to your child’s total development as good food, cleanliness, and rest.
    Joanne E. Oppenheim (20th century)

    The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.
    Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)

    The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)