The extended access control for machine readable travel documents

Abstract

Machine Readable travel documents have been rapidly put in place since 2004. The initial standard was made by the ICAO and it has been quickly followed by the Extended Access Control (EAC). In this paper we discuss about the evolution of these standards and more precisely on the evolution of EAC. We intend to give a realistic survey on these standards. We discuss about their problems, such as the inexistence of a clock in the biometric passports and the absence of a switch preventing the lecture of a closed passport. We also look at the issue with retrocompatibility that could be easily solved and the issue with terminal revocation that is harder.