Since 2019, motorists in New South Wales (NSW) have been able to use a smartphone app to prove their identity to police or when buying alcohol in shops and restaurants, Ars Technica reports.

The digital licences were touted as more secure to physical, plastic licences – but researchers say fake digital IDs can be made with “minimal effort” in less than an hour, and sometimes in mere minutes.

By cracking a four-digit PIN – which can only have around 10,000 possibilities – savvy users can change details including the name, photo and date of birth on a digital licence without rendering it invalid.

“Given the digital driver licence’s current state of security, we believe it would be far more difficult for an average fraudster to obtain the equipment necessary to produce high quality plastic NSW drivers licences,” researcher Noah Farmer said in a blog post.

Around four million people in NSW currently have digital driving licences and around 70% of the state’s population say they trust it as a means of identification.