RFID More Hackable Than Retailers Think?

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Lukas Grunwald, a senior consultant with DN-Systems Enterprise Solutions GmbH, is warning retailers that the RFID technology that they are quickly adopting can easily be hacked with the appropriate tools. Grunwald has written a program called RFDump which lets you read and display all metadata within an RFID tag and also modify the user data using a text or hex editor. He wrote this program to demonstrate how consumers can protect themselves by wiping out RFID data after purchasing a product but he acknowledges that it would be trivial to abuse this behavior. What, you might ask, can you do if you hack an RFID tag? Well as the technology is adopted more widely a thief could conceivably mark down the price of an expensive piece of jewelry before paying for it at an automated checkout counter, underage hackers could purchase alcohol or adult movies, and pranksters could simply reprogram the inventory of an entire store by just walking up and down the isles. 'The people who will be using this (shopkeepers) don't know much about technology,' Grunwald warned."

Comments

Cutting down rainforests?

[Kombat]

McDonalds (cutting down rainforests),

Uhm, what? There are so many things wrong with this, I'm not sure where to start.

First of all, it's not the fast-food companies that are cutting down forests, it's lumber companies. If a beef farmer needs some space for his cows, he cuts down a field, and then he's done, that's it. The next year, he doesn't need to cut down another field, he can simply use the same field. Lumber companies, on the other hand, are constantly trying to feed North America's voracious appetite for lumber. Every travel to Europe? Do a little digging and learn how houses are constructed in areas without such an abundant supply of lumber. What kind of house do you live in? Unless it's steel/concrete, guess what: You're part of the problem.

Secondly, McDonald's doesn't chop down any rainforests at all. Why would they? "For grazing land for their beef", you say? But McDonald's doesn't actually own any cows. Do you really think fast food chains farm their own animals? McDonald's isn't in the business of raising cows, they're in the business of selling shitty hamburgers. They outsource their beef production. Do you think KFC has a massive chain of chicken farms somewhere? Nope. In order to be competitive, fast food chains focus solely on their "core business", that is, the actual cooking and delivery of the food.

It is probably likely that some of the suppliers McDonald's uses may chop down some rainforests for land, but you can hardly blame McDonald's for that.

And finally, there's nothing wrong with chopping down forests anyway! Forests are a renewable resource. They'll grow back. This is a natural part of the cycle. There's no problem here.

You want to worry about something, worry about the companies that are wasting oil. Now that's something that won't grow back.