Chris Paget isn't a hacker, but he's got the means to clone the RFID chip in your passport. Think of it as him doing you a favour. Using $250 of off-the-shelf components, Chris built a machine to sniff and clone RFID tags. During a 20-minute drive in downtown San Francisco, he managed to copy two passports completely unbeknownst to their owners.
Paget claims he only built it to show that it's possible:
"It's one thing to say that something can be done, it's another thing completely to actually do it. It's mainly to defeat the argument that you can't do it in the real world, that there's no real-world attack here, that it's all theoretical."
For a video of the device in action, click over the jump.
(via, and loads more detail at, The Register)
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Please let me know where I can purchase that equipment for 250$. Firstly the equipment being shown costs easily over 1500$. Secondly that hardware that is shown is used in the UHF frequency band. Well my knowledge tells me that RFID passports use HF tags. Well he had his 5 minutes of fame. Next please...
You're wrong about the frequency band but right about the hardware price. Despite many recommendations to the contrary, the Department of Homeland Security opted for UHF tags for the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and similar programs. You can see a good roundup of the debate here: http://www.rfidupdate.com/articles/index.php?id=1516