New electronic passports utilise Infineon security chips

Carsten Loschinsky, Head of Business Line Government ID for the Chip Card & Security Division of Infineon Technologies, commented: "Our security chips create the technological pre-requisite for more data security and provide trust in electronic passports and eIDs on the part of public authorities and citizens."

In order to meet the continually increasing security requirements for contactless access to data stored on the passport, the International Civil Aviation Organization recommends use of the SAC protocol. In contrast to the earlier generation Basic Access Control protocol, SAC is based on asymmetric encryption. Within the EU, SAC will be mandatory for electronic passports issued from December 2014. As the first European country to comply with the new requirement, the Republic of Kosovo will issue 800,000 electronic passports.

Current IHS market research estimates that roughly 192 million electronic passports are in circulation in Europe. In this region, over 30 million new electronic passports are issued each year.

Security chips based on the digital security technology 'Integrity Guard' offer the highest level of protection against data manipulation that is currently available. The passport-holder's personal data stored in encrypted form on the security chip and also processed in encrypted form. The SLE 78 security controllers feature a 16-bit architecture to provide better computing performance, which results in faster processing for citizens when they cross borders.

Infineon SLE 78 security chip key features:

All features – and specifically the Integrity Guard – are designed with the following in mind:

• R&D efficiency for application development
• Short time to market for end customer products
• Robustness, quality and long product life spans
• Open architecture to accommodate future hardware extension