In 2004, the ICAO published a new version of Doc9303 that defines the specifications of the electronic passports, known as ePassports. These passports, easily recognizable with their logo on the front cover, contain a passive contactless chip featured with some cryptographic mecanisms.
ePassport Viewer is a GPL-friendly tool to read and checks ePassports, developped by Jean-Francois Houzard and Olivier Roger during their Master Thesis achieved in the Information Security Group of the UCL in Belgium. ePassport Viewer is currently available as beta version.
News
Sep, 2009Version 1.0 of ePassport Viewer releasedWindows MacOSX Source May 18, 2009Version 0.2c of ePassport Viewer releasedWindows MacOSX Source May 1, 2009First Public Release
ePassport ViewerePassport Viewer is a GUI built on top of pyPassport. The software provides the following functionality:
Read and display the results; Save/Load a dump; Export subset of data (Picture, Signature, Public key, Certificate); Export a summary in XML or PDF format; Make a "fingerprint" of the passport; Verify the data's authenticity and integrity. ePassport Viewer is released under GNU General Public License, Version 3 License.
DisclaimerBefore using ePassport Viewer, you must be sure that you are allowed to read the contactless chip of your passport, according to the laws and regulations of the country that issued it.
DocumentationUser Manual Installation Instructions SmartCard_Service_Deamon: smartcard.pcsc.PCSCExceptions.EstablishContextException OpenSSL: The security labels are orange Hardware Compatibility IRIS PEN ExpressIRISPEN express is a product from the IRIS company, specialized in OCR technology. This pen allows to scan the passport MRZ and fill the application in a single move. This become very handy if you need to do it frequently.
LinksThe JMRTD website list some Country Signing Certificates found using Google.
You can learn more about electronic passports: Belgian Biometric Passport does not get a pass... by Gildas Avoine, Kassem Kalach, and Jean-Jacques Quisquater (2007).
Related softwaresGolden Reader Tool by BSI JMRTD: A Free Implementation of Machine Readable Travel Documents (JAVA) RFIDIOt: RFID tools (Python) wzMRTD: ePassport API by Johann Dantant (C++) AcknowledgmentWe would like to thank J.-P. Szikora, A. Laurie, M. Oostdijk, I. Etingof, Ph. Teuvens, and M. Vuagnoux for their comments or advices.
