Interesting article on RFID hacking

[thewayne]

Be fwightened. Be vewy vewy fwightened. And don't trust the little buggers if you're relying on them for a single-point security system, they're (currently) easily cloned and hacked, and knowing the attitude of most business, that's not going to change soon.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/rfid.html

Comments

[deborak]

That's awesome on the hacker's part. :-)

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Yep. Amazing how little work it takes to compromise those things. But it's pretty short range, almost requires physical touch.

[silveradept]

Con men can get that close without a problem. Even just normal people with a vendetta could get close enough to do serious damage. RFID is not the solution yet, it appears, for anything which is more sensitive than totally public data.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

For security applications, I think that if RFID were used in conjunction with other security tools, that you might be able to use them effectively. For example, if you had an embedded "grain" in your hand, combine that with a keypad that is screened from outside observation so that you can enter a PIN as confirmation to the RFID.

If they become utterly pervasive, I'd be considering building a low wattage transmitter for my house that would basically blanket the frequencies used to read them. As far as the RFID passports are concerned, apparently putting them in a foil envelope is enough to prevent them from being remotely read.

[silveradept]

Hrm. That could work. Still, until most of the potential ramifications are worked out, I don't necessarily want to see too much adoption. Perhaps I'm slightly paranoid about the potential "Evil government" applications.