A British researcher–using simple RFID technology–has become the first human “infected” with a computer virus. Using a contaminated implanted chip, he successfully transmitted the virus to other external systems.
Posts Tagged ‘rfid’
New Protocol Addresses RFID Vulnerability
Sunday, May 9th, 2010
An open-ended technology with a variety of applications, the RFID chip has become common in use for tracking items and communicating with secure systems. This is a potential boon to hackers who can exploit their minimal processing power for their own ends, and the chips themselves are often none the wiser.
A crucial shortcoming of RFID technology is the chip’s inability to determine the distance to a device attempting to gain access. By manipulating this weakness, hackers can easily intercept communications between chips and readers, giving themselves an “in” for future attacks on whatever systems they control. In order to enable an RFID to determine the location of an access point, a power source would be necessary, which is counterintuitive to their passive design concept.
Eslam Gamal Ahmed, a researcher at Cairo’s Ain Shams University, and his colleagues have devised a new security protocol for implementation between the tags and their readers. Whereas other approaches required an exchange of random numbers between a powered RFID and its reader, Eslam’s new protocol generates strings at the source and stores them on the passive chip, minimizing the potential for unauthorized access. While this breakthrough technique has yet to prove itself in real-world application, it could be the key to securing the increasingly valuable assets protected by RFID technology.
Understanding “The Internet of Things”
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Currently in its planning phases, the second annual “Internet of Things Conference” in Tokyo will take place this November. Discussing some of the conference’s proposed topics and how they’ll shape the future of the Internet of Things, a recent article on ReadWriteWeb explores the incredibly vast scope of this connected device landscape.
Some of the highlights include:
- How the IoT–through the smart grid and other eco-initiatives–will encourage a greener planet
- The creation of entirely new industries from relatively simple, novel tech ideas
- The potential for connected technologies such as RFID and GPS to threaten personal privacy and security
As the Internet of Things continues its rapid expansion, the need to ensure device integrity and security–as an integral part of the design–will become increasingly critical.
iPad: The Missing Link?
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
As devices in the home become increasingly networked and internet-connected–e.g., the “internet fridge”–the missing link could be a simple, portable, user-oriented device that acts as an interface, wirelessly connecting the range of devices that make up the “Internet of Things.”
A recent article on ReadWriteWeb suggests that this central device could be Apple’s iPad:
…[T]he mistake we’ve made with Internet fridges in the past was to think of them like a dumb sensor…it’s not the instrumentation that is important in an Internet fridge – it’s the network.
The data will probably be collected by the fridge, in time via RFID-enabled food packaging. But the fridge itself is a clumsy interface to that data. Early examples of Internet fridges have tried to be an interface for the consumer. Although some have had tablet-like devices that could be disconnected from the fridge and used on the kitchen bench, users have not found even those very compelling….
The iPad, however, will be used anywhere and everywhere by its users – inside and outside the house. So it’s a natural device to use to connect (virtually, not physically) to your fridge – along with other appliances and objects.
Smart Dust: Coming Soon (Security Not Included).
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
A recent article in The New York Times examines a number of advancements in the world of high-performance sensors, all of which make the emergence of “smart dust”–a previously theorized worldwide network of super small, low-power, high-performance embedded sensors–one step closer to reality. Unfortunately, security is rarely one of the design considerations.
As reported in The New York Times,
Power consumption has long been the Achilles’ heel of sensor-based computing. Smart dust…proved impossible because the clever sensors needed batteries. Instead of dust…the sensor nodules would be the size of grapefruits.
But the power barrier…is rapidly eroding. Advances in sensor chips are delivering predictable, rapid progress in the amount of data processing that can be done per unit of energy. That…expands the potential data workloads that sensors can handle and the distance over which they can communicate — without batteries.
…Intel…is doing sensor research that builds on commercial RFID technology (for remote identification) and adds an accelerometer and a programmable chip — in a package measured in millimeters. Its power…can come from either a radio-frequency reader, as in RFID, or the ambient radio power from television, FM radio and WiFi networks. (For the latter, Intel is developing “power-harvesting circuits…”.
“The ability to eliminate batteries for these sensors brings the vision of smart dust closer to reality…”.
In this model of computing, the sensors are servants. They exist to generate data. And the more sensors there are, the better the data quality should be. When mined and analyzed, better data should in turn help people make smarter decisions about things as diverse as energy policy and product marketing.
If sensor-based computing takes off, it will ignite fresh demand for a wide range of hardware and software to store, process and search the new oceans of data for nuggets of useful knowledge. So it could be a boon to business, a foundation for what analysts call “the Internet of Things.”
Are Cyber-spies Tracking You Across The Border?
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
A British research team investigating RFID-based passports–currently used by more than 30 million people in over 50 countries–has discovered a flaw that allows hackers to track the movements of a particular passport in real time, without having to first break the passport’s built-in cryptographic key.
According to researchers at the University of Birmingham, UK:
To trace a passport we eavesdrop on a legitimate session between a passport and a reader, and record the encrypted message… Then, when we want to identify a particular passport, we replay this message. If this replayed message is rejected because the MAC check failed then we know this is not the same passport, as the MAC key is unique to each passport. If however the message is rejected because of a failed nonce we know that the MAC check, using the unique passport key, succeeded and therefore we have found the same passport again…
A traceability attack does not lead to the compromise of all data on the tag, but it does pose a very real threat to the privacy of anyone that carries such a device. Assuming that the target carried their passport on them, an attacker could place a device in a doorway that would detect when the target entered or left a building.
The proposed fix for this vulnerability is to standardize the error messages across all RFID-based passports.
The (not-so) Dumb Adversary
Monday, May 4th, 2009
“The adversary doesn’t get any dumber,” Kevin Fu recently commented to The Boston Globe. To prove his point, Fu, who is investigating RFID attacks and countermeasures at the RFID Consortium for Security and Privacy, or CUSP, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his researchers conducted a rather extreme experiment.
For their experiment, Fu and his colleagues at the Medical Device Security Center — a partnership between UMass, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and the University of Washington – used a defibrillator that included a radio frequency chip and transponder to allow doctors to read and record patient information, and to reprogram the device.
The Secure Medicine team was able to glean the equivalent of personal medical records from the defibrillator by using an ad-hoc, unauthorized device. The researchers also managed to take control of the defibrillator, to create shocks that would be life-threatening to a patient.
But he believes there is a solution — using sophisticated radio frequency devices to foil attackers.
The Secure Medicine team is developing a radio frequency gadget called WISPer, which sounds an audible alarm and vibrates when it detects unauthorized attempts to reprogram an implanted device. To test it, researchers packed the WISPer prototype into a simulated human torso, made of beef and bacon. It worked.
We wonder if a better approach might have the device “phone home” electronically to the manufacturer, who can then approach the patient in a perhaps less freaky way.
Of course the best approach is to prevent arbitrary code execution in the first place, even if that code is successfully introduced into the system. Anti-malware code purpose-built for tight device environments, like Mocana’s NanoDefender™.
“War Cloning — It’s the New Hacker Sport,”
Monday, February 9th, 2009
Or so says Chris Paget, a security researcher who, “with a $250 used RFID scanner he purchased on eBay and a low-profile antenna tucked away in his car, recently cruised the streets along Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, where he captured — and cloned — a half-dozen electronic passports within an hour.”
Talking about the security weaknesses of the EPC Gen 2 RFID tags, which are being used in the new wallet-sized passport cards offered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DarkReading’s Kelly Jackson Higgins writes,
Unlike previous RFID hacks that have been conducted within inches of the targeted ID, Paget’s hack can scan RFID tags from 20 feet away. “This is a vicinity versus proximity read,” he [Paget] says. “The passport card is a real radio broadcast, so there’s no real limit to the read range. It’s conceivable that these things can be tracked from 100 meters — a couple of miles.”
Paget says he was able to drive his car at 30 miles per hour and capture an RFID tag in a matter of seconds. “The software for [copying them] lets you just choose the tag you want to copy, wave a blank tag in front of it, and it writes it out,” he says.
Make your own Faraday Cage Wallet
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008Worried about passers-by “sniffing” your personal information from the RFID tags in your passport, ID, ATM or credit cards? Here’s a fun do-it-yourself project for the paranoid. Or maybe the prudent.
FasTrak or FastHACK?
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008“Incredibly easy to hack” (http://www.scdigest.com/assets/On_Target/08-09-01-1.php?cid=1893) claim experts at computer security firm Root Labs regarding San Francisco’s FasTrak auto toll system. Apparently the RFID tags placed in a car’s windshield don’t use any encryption. “It would be easy, therefore, for a hacker to quickly acquire hundreds or thousands of valid ID numbers that could be cloned onto other transponders.”
Just one more reason to road rage.
“Incredibly easy to hack” claim experts at computer security firm Root Labs regarding San Francisco’s FasTrak auto toll system. Apparently the RFID tags placed in a car’s windshield don’t use any encryption. “It would be easy, therefore, for a hacker to quickly acquire hundreds or thousands of valid ID numbers that could be cloned onto other transponders.”
Just one more reason to road rage.
