14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers point out that fake passports, ID cards, driver's licenses and other documents have become commodities that can be ordered from the Internet thanks to some websites that openly offer such services.
"In today's episode of What Can You Find On the Web, we give you an online store for purchasing fake passports that we ran into," Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at antivirus vendor F-Secure, writes in a post on the company's blog.
"Prices of these range from $650 to $1000. They don't seem to (yet?) offer passports with embedded RFID chips," he adds.
Nevertheless, according to information presented on the website, the merchandise is of top notch quality. The providers claim to be able to reproduce all security features from the real documents.
This includes special paper, security threads, microprinting, intaglio printing, fluorescent dyes, color-changing ink, document number laser perforation, watermarks or latent images.
Fake passports, driver's licensese, ID cards, stamps and other documents for countries like USA, UK, Australia, Germany, Holland, France, Canada, Finland, Belgium or Brazil can be purchased from the website.
The service promises complete confidentiality and even offers to duplicate real documents. Shipping takes two to five days and is done via DHL, UPS Express and FedEX in plain unmarked white envelops.
As far as payment is concerned, several methods are accepted including wire transfers, Webmoney, Western Union and MoneyGram, but not credit cards or Paypal due to the nature of the business.
Online document forging services are not new, but the website found by F-Secure stands as example that they are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
And the RFID (Radio-frequency identification) tags, which many governments have already started embedded into such documents, do not necessarily represent a long term solution to the problem.
Previous research into RFID security has demonstrated that the information stored on such chips can be fairly easily snooped and cloned.