Entries Tagged "RFID"

Page 4 of 8

Skimming RFID Credit Cards

It’s easy to skim personal information off an RFID credit card.

From The New York Times:

They could skim and store the information from a card with a device the size of a couple of paperback books, which they cobbled together from readily available computer and radio components for $150. They say they could probably make another one even smaller and cheaper: about the size of a pack of gum for less than $50. And because the cards can be read even through a wallet or an item of clothing, the security of the information, the researchers say, is startlingly weak. ‘Would you be comfortable wearing your name, your credit card number and your card expiration date on your T-shirt?’ Mr. Heydt-Benjamin, a graduate student, asked.

And from The Register:

The attack uses off-the-shelf radio and card reader equipment that could cost as little as $150. Although the attack fails to yield verification codes normally needed to make online purchases, it would still be potentially possible for crooks to use the data to order goods and services from online stores that don’t request this information.

Despite assurances by the issuing companies that data contained on RFID-based credit cards would be encrypted, the researchers found that the majority of cards they tested did not use encryption or other data protection technology.

And from the RFID Journal:

I don’t think the exposing of potential vulnerabilities of these cards is a huge black eye for the credit-card industry or for the RFID industry. Millions of people won’t suddenly have their credit-card numbers exposed to thieves the way they do when someone hacks a bank’s database or an employee loses a laptop with the card numbers on it. But it is likely that these vulnerabilities will need to be addressed as the technology becomes more mature and criminals start figuring out ways to abuse it.

Posted on November 7, 2006 at 12:49 PM • View Comments

DHS Privacy Committee Recommends Against RFID Cards

The Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee of the Department of Homeland Security recommended against putting RFID chips in identity cards. It’s only a draft report, but what it says is so controversial that a vote on the final report is being delayed.

Executive Summary:

Automatic identification technologies like RFID have valuable uses, especially in connection with tracking things for purposes such as inventory management. RFID is particularly useful where it can be embedded within an object, such as a shipping container.

There appear to be specific, narrowly defined situations in which RFID is appropriate for human identification. Miners or firefighters might be appropriately identified using RFID because speed of identification is at a premium in dangerous situations and the need to verify the connection between a card and bearer is low.

But for other applications related to human beings, RFID appears to offer little benefit when compared to the consequences it brings for privacy and data integrity. Instead, it increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security. Most difficult and troubling is the situation in which RFID is ostensibly used for tracking objects (medicine containers, for example), but can be in fact used for monitoring human behavior. These types of uses are still being explored and remain difficult to predict.

For these reasons, we recommend that RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings. When DHS does choose to use RFID to identify and track individuals, we recommend the implementation of the specific security and privacy safeguards described herein.

Posted on November 1, 2006 at 7:29 AM • View Comments

The Doghouse: SecureRF

SecureRF:

Claims to offer the first feasible security for RFIDs. Conventional public key cryptography (such as RSA) is far too computationally intensive for an RFID. SecureRF provides a similar technology at far lower footprint by harnessing a relatively obscure area of mathematics: infinite group theory, which comes (of all places) from knot theory, a branch of topology.

Their website claims to have “white papers” on the theory, but you have to give them your personal information to get it. Of course, they reference no actual published cryptography papers. “New mathematics” is my Snake-Oil Warning Sign #2—and I strongly suspect their documentation displays several other of the warning signs, too. I’d stay away from this one.

Posted on October 9, 2006 at 7:47 AM • View Comments

Renew Your Passport Now!

If you have a passport, now is the time to renew it—even if it’s not set to expire anytime soon. If you don’t have a passport and think you might need one, now is the time to get it. In many countries, including the United States, passports will soon be equipped with RFID chips. And you don’t want one of these chips in your passport.

RFID stands for “radio-frequency identification.” Passports with RFID chips store an electronic copy of the passport information: your name, a digitized picture, etc. And in the future, the chip might store fingerprints or digital visas from various countries.

By itself, this is no problem. But RFID chips don’t have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship.

At first the State Department belittled those risks, but in response to criticism from experts it has implemented some security features. Passports will come with a shielded cover, making it much harder to read the chip when the passport is closed. And there are now access-control and encryption mechanisms, making it much harder for an unauthorized reader to collect, understand and alter the data.

Although those measures help, they don’t go far enough. The shielding does no good when the passport is open. Travel abroad and you’ll notice how often you have to show your passport: at hotels, banks, Internet cafes. Anyone intent on harvesting passport data could set up a reader at one of those places. And although the State Department insists that the chip can be read only by a reader that is inches away, the chips have been read from many feet away.

The other security mechanisms are also vulnerable, and several security researchers have already discovered flaws. One found that he could identify individual chips via unique characteristics of the radio transmissions. Another successfully cloned a chip. The State Department called this a “meaningless stunt,” pointing out that the researcher could not read or change the data. But the researcher spent only two weeks trying; the security of your passport has to be strong enough to last 10 years.

This is perhaps the greatest risk. The security mechanisms on your passport chip have to last the lifetime of your passport. It is as ridiculous to think that passport security will remain secure for that long as it would be to think that you won’t see another security update for Microsoft Windows in that time. Improvements in antenna technology will certainly increase the distance at which they can be read and might even allow unauthorized readers to penetrate the shielding.

Whatever happens, if you have a passport with an RFID chip, you’re stuck. Although popping your passport in the microwave will disable the chip, the shielding will cause all kinds of sparking. And although the United States has said that a nonworking chip will not invalidate a passport, it is unclear if one with a deliberately damaged chip will be honored.

The Colorado passport office is already issuing RFID passports, and the State Department expects all U.S. passport offices to be doing so by the end of the year. Many other countries are in the process of changing over. So get a passport before it’s too late. With your new passport you can wait another 10 years for an RFID passport, when the technology will be more mature, when we will have a better understanding of the security risks and when there will be other technologies we can use to cut the risks. You don’t want to be a guinea pig on this one.

This op ed appeared on Saturday in the Washington Post.

I’ve written about RFID passports many times before (that last link is an op-ed from The International Herald-Tribune), although last year I—mistakenly—withdrew my objections based on the security measures the State Department was taking. I’ve since realized that they won’t be enough.

EDITED TO ADD (9/29): This op ed has appeared in about a dozen newspapers. The San Jose Mercury News published a rebuttal. Kind of lame, I think.

EDITED TO ADD (12/30): Here’s how to disable a RFID passport.

Posted on September 18, 2006 at 6:06 AM • View Comments

DHS Report on US-VISIT and RFID

Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General, “Enhanced Security Controls Needed For US-VISIT’s System Using RFID Technology (Redacted),” OIG-06-39, June 2006.

From the Executive Summary:

We audited the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and select organizational components’ security programs to evaluate the effectiveness of controls implemented on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems. Systems employing RFID technology include a tag and reader on the front end and an application and database on the back end.

[…]

Overall, information security controls have been implemented to provide an effective level of security on the Automated Identification Management System (AIDMS). US-VISIT has implemented effective physical security controls over the RFID tags, readers, computer equipment, and database supporting the RFID system at the POEs visited. No personal information is stored on the tags used for US-VISIT. Travelers’ personal information is maintained in and can be obtained only with access to the system’s database. Additional security controls would need to be implemented if US-VISIT decides to store travelers’ personal information on RFID-enabled forms or migrates to universally readable Generation 2 (Gen2) products.

Although these controls provide overall system security, US-VISIT has not properly configured its AIDMS database to ensure that data captured and stored is properly protected. Furthermore, while AIDMS is operating with an Authority to Operate, US-VISIT had not tested its contingency plan to ensure that critical operations could be restored in the event of a disruption. In addition, US-VISIT has not developed its own RFID policy or ensured that the standard operating procedures are properly distributed and followed at all POEs.

I wrote about US-VISIT in 2004 and again in 2006. In that second essay, I gave a price of $15B. I have since come to not believe that data, and I don’t have any better information on the price. But I still think my analysis holds. I would much rather take the money spent on US-VISIT and spend it on intelligence and investigation, the kind of security that resulted in the U.K. arrests earlier this week and is likely to actually make us safer.

Posted on August 11, 2006 at 7:27 AM • View Comments

Technological Arbitrage

This is interesting. Seems that a group of Sri Lankan credit card thieves collected the data off a bunch of UK chip-protected credit cards.

All new credit cards in the UK come embedded come with RFID chips that contain different pieces of user information, in order to access the account and withdraw cash the ATMs has to verify both the magnetic strip and the RFID tag. Without this double verification the ATM will confiscate the card, and possibly even notify the police.

They’re not RFID chips, they’re normal smart card chips that require physical contact—but that’s not the point.

They couldn’t clone the chips, so they took the information off the magnetic stripe and made non-chip cards. These cards wouldn’t work in the UK, of course, so the criminals flew down to India where the ATMs only verify the magnetic stripe.

Backwards compatibility is often incompatible with security. This is a good example, and demonstrates how criminals can make use of “technological arbitrage” to leverage compatibility.

EDITED TO ADD (8/9): Facts corrected above.

Posted on August 9, 2006 at 6:32 AM • View Comments

Hackers Clone RFID Passports

It was demonstrated today at the BlackHat conference.

Grunwald says it took him only two weeks to figure out how to clone the passport chip. Most of that time he spent reading the standards for e-passports that are posted on a website for the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations body that developed the standard. He tested the attack on a new European Union German passport, but the method would work on any country’s e-passport, since all of them will be adhering to the same ICAO standard.

In a demonstration for Wired News, Grunwald placed his passport on top of an official passport-inspection RFID reader used for border control. He obtained the reader by ordering it from the maker—Walluf, Germany-based ACG Identification Technologies—but says someone could easily make their own for about $200 just by adding an antenna to a standard RFID reader.

He then launched a program that border patrol stations use to read the passports—called Golden Reader Tool and made by secunet Security Networks—and within four seconds, the data from the passport chip appeared on screen in the Golden Reader template.

Grunwald then prepared a sample blank passport page embedded with an RFID tag by placing it on the reader—which can also act as a writer—and burning in the ICAO layout, so that the basic structure of the chip matched that of an official passport.

As the final step, he used a program that he and a partner designed two years ago, called RFDump, to program the new chip with the copied information.

The result was a blank document that looks, to electronic passport readers, like the original passport.

I’ve long been opposed (that last link is an op-ed from The International Herald-Tribune) to RFID chips in passports, although last year I—mistakenly—withdrew my objections based on the security measures the State Department was taking.

That’s silly. I’m not opposed to chips on ID cards, I am opposed to RFID chips. My fear is surreptitious access: someone could read the chip and learn your identity without your knowledge or consent.

Sure, the State Department is implementing security measures to prevent that. But as we all know, these measures won’t be perfect. And a passport has a ten-year lifetime. It’s sheer folly to believe the passport security won’t be hacked in that time. This hack took only two weeks!

The best way to solve a security problem is not to have it at all. If there’s an RFID chip on your passport, or any of your identity cards, you have to worry about securing it. If there’s no RFID chip, then the security problem is solved.

Until I hear a compelling case for why there must be an RFID chip on a passport, and why a normal smart-card chip can’t do, I am opposed to the idea.

Crossposted to the ACLU blog.

Posted on August 3, 2006 at 3:45 PM • View Comments

1 2 3 4 5 6 … 8

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.