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.
pyPassport 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. pyPassport is currently available as beta version.
News
August 8, 2009Version 1.0 of pyPassport releasedSource May 18, 2009Version 0.1a of pyPassport releasedSource May 1, 2009First Public Release
pyPassportpyPassport is an API written in Python that allows to interact with electronic passports compliant with ICAO Doc9303. The downloadable version is still a work in progress but is stable enough to be tested as a beta version. The API provides an interface with the following functionalities:
Perform the Basic Access Control and Secure Messaging; Perform the passive and active authentications; Read the content of the ePassport, including the pictures in JPEG format. Create "valid" auto-signed ePassport content. (require java 1.6) pyPassport is released under GNU Lesser General Public License, Version 3 License.
DisclaimerBefore using pyPassport, 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.
DocumentationInstallation Instructions API User Guide API Usage Example ePassport Forgery Hardware Compatibility Known UseePassportViewer: GUI using pyPassport to read and display the ePassport content. DependenciespyPassport uses two tools and several python supporting frameworks:
ToolsOpenSSL for certificate and signature manipulation. Geojasper to handle JPEG2000 image format. Supporting frameworkspyasn1 to manipulate asn1 data structures. pyCrypto for de/cipher data. pyScard to communicate with smartcard readers. Links The 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.
