Quote Originally Posted by chrestomanci View Post
The quoted range is based on a normal reader with a simple antena and running at low power.

If a hacker has a highy directonal antena, and runs it at increased power, you could probably multiply the range by at least 100.

Similar hacks have been done with bluetooth. It is only supposed to have a range of 5-10m, but by hooking up 50cm long Yagi antena to a laptop bluetooth card, hackers have been able to crack phones at 2-300m.


That depends what information the bad guys are after.

There are plenty of fanatics in the middle east who chant "Death to all Americans" Imagine them building a smart bomb that detects a passing american from their RFID passport. A still smarter one could even target a specific individual.
but you can't get that information without the date of birth, printed on the passport. sure, if your passport was open, and you waved it around, they could photograph it, use that as they key, then brake into the passport, but they could just as easily steal it from you