Biometric Passports

Can the British passport chip be cloned?

It is widely accepted in the industry that most computer chips can be cloned, just like a passport could be photocopied. The most important question is whether the ability to clone a chip similar to that incorporated in the passport actually poses a threat to the security of the passport, it would not be possible to successfully forge a passport by doing this. The security around the UK passport chip prevents anyone changing or deleting any of the data/information on the chip, which is what is required to successfully forge the passport because:

As no data/information can be changed, modified, corrupted or deleted, any clone would still contain the original holder's information.
The data on the chip is also locked using a digital certificate and any change, addition or deletion is easily evident.
The data on the chip is a copy of the data that is printed on page 31 of the passport and any differences between the two would be immediately noticed by officials.

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