ID cards will be 'cloned within six months'

ID cards will be "perfectly" copied within six months, according to a leading fraud expert.

Frank Abagnale - whose story was made famous by the Steven Spielberg film, Catch Me If You Can - has warned the ID card scheme will be easily cracked.

He told the BBC: "I give it six months before someone replicates it perfectly."

Abagnale, who is now a consultant helping to crack down on fraud and identity theft, added: "Everything you need to clone an identity is in one place."

Separately, the government has revealed more details of the security it claims will protect ID cards from hackers.

In response to questions from MPs the Home Office parliamentary under secretary, Joan Ryan, said the ID cards will carry a "proximity" or "contactless" chip which can be read up to 2cm from the reader.

But Ryan said the contents of the chip can only be 'unlocked' after special characters printed on the identity card's 'machine readable zone' (MRZ) are scanned.

Ryan said in a statement: "An attempt to read the chip without using the information printed in the MRZ to 'unlock' it will yield no data which can be used to identify the individual."

This technology is different to RFID, she said. "While both use radio frequencies, they operate very differently from one another - an RFID tag is just an identity tag that provides information.

"A proximity chip is more advanced - it has processing capability with different operating systems and different security settings. This is reflected in the fact that they are defined by two separate standards set by the International Organization for Standardization."

Read silicon.com's A to Z of ID cards for the lowdown on this controversial project.