Germany is on the brink of introducing new biometric identification cards. Those new IDs not only replace the old cards, but can also be used for identification online, for instance to contact public authorities.

That sounds great on paper. The system uses a similar concept as the well known banking standard HBCI. Users get a chip reader with their cards for online use. They put the chip into the card and need to enter a pin for security reasons whenever they sign an application or need to identify themselves online.

Members of the German Chaos Computer Club, in cooperation with Swiss security experts, have demonstrated that the security on the new ID cards is not hack-proof.

They have identified several weaknesses, including:

• Attacking computers with trojans or man in the middle attacks. Card owners with basic card readers (without a physical numpad to enter the pin) are affected by this. More advanced card readers are still prone for other attacks, including man in the middle. A million of those basic kits were ordered by the German authorities.
• Card contents and identities can be copied.
• No application standards for signing legal documents. The experts demonstrated that with a PDF and JavaScript contents. The JavaScript contents were not displayed to the signer of the contract, while they were displayed in Adobe’s PDF reader. This means that legally binding contracts can be signed by ID card owners without them seeing all contents on the contracts.

What can users do to protect their cards against abuse? Germans can get an old identification card until October this year. If a new ID card is the only option, users should make sure to either get a more advanced card reader with numpad to protect against the most basic attack forms, or make the chip on the card invalid.

How this can be done was demonstrated by a ninth grade school class some weeks ago. Brave new world, here we come..

A click on the Print Now button will send the print job to the local printer so that the ID card photo can be printed the selected amount of times on the page.

There is not anything special about this printing software and the same effect could be initiated by almost any software that can display images and provide printing possibilities. The main advantage of using ID card photo printing software is the ease of use. It does not take longer than a few seconds to start the print job whereas it usually takes longer to do the same in non-specialized software programs.

ID Card Photo is compatible with most versions and editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website and requires that at least one printer is installed on the computer system.