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Real RFID Hacking Scenarios
kjh1 writes "Wired is running an article on RFID hacking that has potentially scary implications. Many RFID tags have no encryption and will happily transmit their information in the clear if they are active or within range of a reader. Worse yet is that they can be overwritten. Some interesting scenarios and experiments: snagging the code off of a security badge and replaying it to gain access to a secure building; vandalizing library contents by wiping or changing tags on books; changing the prices of items in a grocery or other store; and getting free gas by tweaking the ExxonMobil SpeedPass tags."
I think it's common practice for most serious security badges to rely on RFID for part of the verification, but some sort of user input for the rest. I have a prox card at work (which, I assume, is an RFID-based card), but the card only activates a keypad. Without my PIN, it's useless.
From TFA:
:)
A typical passive RFID chip costs about a quarter, whereas one with encryption capabilities runs about $5. It's just not cost-effective for your average office building to invest in secure chips.
Ok, office with 200 people. You mean to tell me a lousy thousand bucks isn't worth preventing an intrusion? Some places spend that much a month on copy paper.
I'd call it cost effective considering the alternetive possibilities
Never fear, the DMCA is here to protect us from that sort of behavior. It's illegal, so I doubt criminals would even try it ;) Thanks god for big government!
http://religiousfreaks.com/There will be those who can manipulate it. On one hand I think it's awesome that people have the technical expertise to do it. On the other hand it's scary when you want to play by the rules and be affected negatively by something of this sort.
Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no
It is interesting reading and looks like a fun project. RFID for Makers
What is really needed for security applications that use RFID is a kind of shielded wallet, that when an RFID tag is placed inside would keep the RFID tag from being read. Preferably one that could carry multiple cards and such. When you want something to be able to read it, you open it up. When you don't, you close it.
I don't think many people carry thier credit cards out in the open.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
http://cq.cx/prox.pl
While they may have just realized this everyone else has already known about it. Three years ago I attended BlackHat in Vegas and they presenters already were doing this.
They showed live examples and had very interesting stories about how they were reprogramming cheese to send RFID signals saying they were shavings products. Also, the store they were doing this in used RFID on all their products to make sure everything is shelved in the right place. They would reprogram an item on the shelf (already in the right place) to emit a signal saying it was something else. When the store came by to move the item to the correct place all they would find is the correct item. The presenters say it drove the store nuts.
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Speedpass is encrypted, they just did a really bad job of the custom cypher they decided to use for it.
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"They send a signal only when a reader powers them with a squirt of electrons". Definitely not. Just some radio waves (think crystal set).
The cheapest RFID chips - by and large - are not read/write. They're read-only. The Wal-Marts of the world aren't putting read/write RFID in their products. This strikes me as largely a non-issue. As far as the securty-badge scenario; you'd have to be pretty close to the badge to get it to transmit. Like, close enough to have it in your hand. If the bad guy has your badge in his hand, you've already got bigger problems.
Dilbert once ran a strip in which the PHB says "Reasoning that anything I don't understand must be easy..." before assigning Dilbert a monumental task on an impossibly short deadline. This is a mental trap that's easy to fall into.
Another similar trap is "Any security technology I don't understand must be secure."
Everyone has some vague notion of how a traditional lock and key work, and how they might be circumvented.
But if there is no hole where the keyhole should be, and what IS there has some spiffy up-to-date appearance, and is "electronic" or "digital," the natural assumption is that because it clearly isn't a traditional lock and key, it must not have the traditional security vulnerabilities of a traditional lock and key... and since we aren't familiar with the new technology, we assume that "no traditional security vulnerabilities" = "no security vulnerabilities."
And, obviously, the vendor of the new system, who is likely to be in the best situation to know them, isn't likely to explain them to us.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Its really no big deal. The vast majority of RFID chips are simply read-only, because thats the bottom of the line cheapest way to go. The card is "pinged" with a radio-field, and the chip burps out its serial number. No over write. No virus attack potential. Nothing of interest... Sure you can spoof these by putting a different tag in its place - oh yay, you've done the same cleverness as peeling a price sticker from a different product.
Read/Write tags are a step up in cost. They range from 20 bytes to 256 bytes of data with a 10 digit serial number. Some brands support encrypted encoding formats. There is a trivial one byte "access key code" that prevents a Writer from writing to an RFID tag if this "access key code" byte doesnt match. Its really more of an accident prevention mechanisim (so you dont accidentally overwrite an ExxonSpeedPass if it was put in a WalMart system).
Encryption of the "Writable" tags is the responsibility of the application. Since you only have 20 bytes (on the more common, cheaper tags) there isnt much you can do anyway as the number of permutations at 20! is low enough for most script-kiddies to crack. When you start getting upto 256 bytes, then sure it makes absolute sense to encrypt the contents. But, when you're at that price level, you're already considering the hardware that can encrypt at the signal level.
(Yes, I write code dealing with RFID tags)
-Mike
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
Remind me again how getting nearly $4/gallon gas for free from ExxonMobil and it's $8.4 billion quarterly profit is scary.
Visit www.seriouslythough.com
The examples given all appeared to be illegal to me.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
RIFD technology has the potential to do everything it's backers claim. Inventory tracking for all manner of transportation and commerce could be MUCH more efficient because it is possible to read hundreds of tagged items at once, and without having to rotate the items to expose the barcodes. Unlike a barcode, or a credit card which is basically just a magentic barcode, easily readable with commonly available readers or even iron filings, RFIDs can be made to keep their codes secret with encryption. It has to be competently done encryption, with secure, proven algorithms and a unique encryption key for EVERY device (it would be retarded if a bank made all of it's rfid credit cards, for instance, use the same key)
Credit card theft and misuse could be almost eliminated with better cards that use encryption so the code changes every time they are used. No longer would the number of your visa card suffice, every transaction would need a new code. For a business relationship, you would press a button on the card to generate a code that a particular merchant could then use repeatedly to charge the card from, and only that merchant.
Of course, every security measure can be broken. Thieves could still swipe actual cards (and they could be cancelled just as quickly like it is today, but no thief could use the card without phyisically possessing it). With electron microscopes and specialized equipment someone could read the codes out of memory for a card, and create duplicates : but the cost and time involved could easily be so onerous that no criminal ever did it.
I think the slashdot mentality is one of fear of the tech because if the megacorps deploying these cards screw it up, we could end up with a system far less secure than we have now. For instance, wireless internet could have been made pretty much 100% secure from the start, but instead was pathetically easy to hack and far less secure than standard cat-5 jacks with no log on.
I imagine a future walmart or best buy where you grab anything you want to buy and throw it in a mostly plastic shopping cart. You wheel it through a special detector booth enclosed on three sides, and with one big electronic beep EVERYTHING gets instantly scanned, and a total price comes. You take your credit card out of its protective foil sheath, push a physical button ON the card (or press your thumbprint to it), and put it into a little recess on the self checkout machine. You close the foil lined door, another beep follows, you open the door and the transaction is done. 15 seconds, start to finish, whether you are buying 1 item or an entire cart full. No more lines at stores that use the technology, ever. Instead of 30 clerks on the job at Walmart, there are just 4 or so "customer service representatives" to handle problems that come up. There's a roll of bags if you want to bag your own stuff, but otherwise you just push the cart right on out of the store. The guards even at best buy never bother to inspect your cart because each expensive or routinely stolen item has a deeply embedded rfid tag with a writable (WRITE ONCE) field that "knows" if it has been bought. Everything in your cart gets interrogated when you push it through the doors.
No need for a paper receipt, either - a customer id for who bought the item is on the tag for each item. When you return stuff, you don't need a receipt, either, the clerk can quickly scan all your items when returned and press one button to instantly refund your money or give you store credit with your store card.
Course, this is the real world. We can't get fcking word processing to work without any trouble at all on computers in offices because viruses, bloatware, stupid users, features creep, and constant other problems mean that the commonly used Word is MORE trouble prone that windows and DOS word perfect I used back in 1990. That's like a modern car being out performed by a model T! I can imagine this RFID stuff not working right either, or a health scare starting up due to the magneti
After the recent reports that companies like Levis were testing RFID tracking in their clothes I started searching around to see what it'd cost to get an RFID reader if I wanted to start tinkering. Although self-contained hand-held readers are still quite pricey I did find an alternative. There are companies that are selling RFID attachments for Palm and Windows CE devices. For about $200-$400 you can buy an RFID device that plugs into an SD slot. Depending on how much you want to pay you can get just a reader or a reader/writer. With a little bit of software work it probably wouldn't be very difficult at all to whip up an RFID "skimmer" that you could just stick into your pocket. Just casually walk buy a security guard and steal his access card, walk around a store and reprogram prices, etc. and nobody would know it was you since you're just walking around and the device in your pocket is doing all the real work.
Why not just tattoo our personal ID info on our foreheads in radar-colored ink?
--
make install -not war
And how is this not being done as is. For anyone who goes into a library, records of what books you check out are kept since you have to submit your library card. Most public libaries are known/thought to share this information with government as it stands.
. htm
I don't know where you get this idea, but currently most public libraries make it a point to destroy the record of you checking out a book after you return it, just so that they don't have this information available if/when the government comes around asking for it. Here is some relevant reading material: http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/ifissues/usapatriotact
The last sentence on page 2 says: "Compare that to the hundreds of years experts estimate it would take for today's computers to break the publicly available encryption tool SHA-1, which is used to secure credit card transactions on the Internet."
This is incorrect.
SHA-1 is a digest algorithm. You give it some data, it outputs a 160-bit string that represents a fingerprint of the data. This fingerprint does not allow you to reconstruct the original input, but you can use it to verify data integrity, that data have not been tempered with. This does not protect against eavesdropping. Hacking a digest algorithm means to find, in a reasonable amount of time, two different inputs that produce the same digest.
SHA-1 is not a cipher. A cipher takes plain-text and a cipher-key in, and produces cipher-text out, which would appear to a third person without a cipher-key as a pretty random string.
I once had a signature.
The June edition contains an interesting article on RFID and its security with respect to consumers. It is a good introductory article that covers all of the main security issues. It also talks about how various people who have been influential in teh government are now working for RFID companies (one being Tom Ridge former Secretary of Homeland Security)
What was interesting to me in the same articla is a reference to IBM having a 2001 patent application for tracking individual persons using the RFID constellation they create when carrying around a significant number of RFID tags. You nominate your target and profile what RFIDs they have, and then just look for that specific profile as it floats from detector to detector. This is scary stuff.
On a slightly related note, I remember seeing a comment somewhere about how teenage boys could profile the RFID constellation of hot looking women walking down the street and correlate this with the Victorias Secret catalogue in order to pick who was wearing the hot lingerie. This is a weird but possible new behaviour that RFIDs is opening.
Of more importance, I saw recently a reference to an RFID tag that could be embedded in currency notes as an anti counterfitting measure. Imagine how the muggers would jump on board this if it comes true.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders! While you drive on highways. Wires in the road and 14 feet above, work fine and log your car movement.
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: ...but the shocking link finally died in July 2004 and the new location 2005 does not have a photo of a RFID bridge underpass RFID database collector. But this 20005 link below does discuss their toll booth RFID tracking uses...
Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.
A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFID chips embedded in the tire).
Yup. My brother works on them (since 2001).
The us gov T.R.E.A.D. act (which passed) made it illegal to sell new passenger cars lacking untamperable RFID in the tires allowing efficient scanning of moving cars.
Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.
Its kind of like FBI "Taggants" in fertilizer and "Taggants" in Gasoline and Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car.
Taggant chemical research papers
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/ ~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)
I am not making this up. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].
It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.
Photos of tracking chips before molded deep into tires!
http://www.sokymat.com/index.php?id=94
PLEASE LOOK AT THAT LINK : Its the same shocking tire material I have been trying to tell people about since the spring of 2001 on slashdot.
a controversial dead older link was at http://www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html
(slashdot ruins links, so you will have to remove the ASCII space it inserts usually into any of my urls to get to the shocking info and photos on the embedded LOGI 160 chips that the us Gov scans when you cross Mexican and Canadian borders.)
You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is (or was) very secret.
Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.
The photo of the secret high speed overpass prototype WAS at
http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html
I think you underestimated how a read-only RFID tag can still be subject to play-back attack. You can fake the presence of an RFID. This becomes a problem when the person deploying RFID doesn't understand the consequences. For example, since perimeter security assumes that authorization is equivalent to the presence of an ID, being able to fake RFID violates this assumption and breaches security.
TFA mentions a couple of these examples, where deployment is flawed. The flaw is not in the RFID technology.
As for encryption, if the RFID always echoes back the same cipher-text, then it is still subject to play-back attack. Encrypted authentication is only useful if there is some sort of challenge-response protocol. I'm sure you know all this.
I once had a signature.
A lot of these problems stem from using RFID as authentication (esp. single-factor) rather than identification.
Most of the good RFID-enabled security measures I've seen essentially use the RFID as a rapid user ID. When I approach a secured door, the RFID says "this is Proteus", and a second device (PIN-pad, hand scanner, etc.) says "ok, prove it". That's much the same as a username/password pair, except cloning the RFID has a higher work-factor than guessing a user ID (e.g. it requires physical proximity and specialized hardware).
That doesn't mean RFID isn't secure. It's just that too many people are using it as magical techno-faery-dust to solve security problems, and that behavior leads to insecurity.
Of course, there are real security issues with certain RFID applications. The DoS that can result from removing/altering the tags is concerning -- makes one wonder why the RFID tag in a library book (for example) needs more data than an unalterable serial number. Can't the readers correlate that number with record in a DB?
Add to that the issue of tracking that comes with things like implantable RFID chips. Yeah, those could just be a serial number. But imagine stores putting RFID scanners in their doorways: they know the ID# of everyone who went in and out of the store, and even if they can't correlate that with your identity, the police could. Now, what if I clone your ID# and rob a store?
Again, though, that's not a problem with the RFID tech, but with an ill-concieved implementation and too much trust. The only security problem with the tech itself is the overwriting/erasing issue.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Snap! Ok, here are a few.
RFID Door
RFID board
Instructions on building an extended range reader
In addition, there was a large rally at the NH State Capitol; here is that video.
Unfortunately, our State Senate pulled some extremely underhanded parlimentary tricks to kill HB1582; all the gory details (and sound bites from the Senate) are here. The good news is, we here in the "Live Free or Die" still actively resisting this intrusion into our privacy!
- One of our Senators (John Sununu) has come out publicly against Real-ID
- We are still actively working to reject the funding to implement Real-ID; see this forum
- If worst comes to worst, people are pledging not to comply with Real-ID should it comes into effect
We take privacy seriously here in New Hampshire, especially privcay from the gorram Government!Part of the Second American Revolution!
Someone who cops a feel is a little different than a sexual predator at least in my mind.
Of course, the courts may think differently than you do.
We had a good example hereabouts (a suburb of Boston) a few years back, when there was a news story about a college student who'd had a few drinks on a Saturday night relieved himself in an alley. Unfortunately for him, he was spotted by a cop, arrested, charged with, and convicted of indecent exposure. It was pointed out in the news stories that now he'd have to register as a sex offender anywhere he ever lived again.
Among all the comments of the draconian nature of this, there were a few that pointed out another problem: To many of us who read the stories, the phrases "sex offender" and "sexual predator" now induce the thought "Probably another guy caught peeing in a dark alley."
Someone once observed that a problem with unjust laws is that they bring the entire legal system into disrespect. Some of the best examples are the extreme reactions to things like this.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
If the ladies were properly armed with handguns, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
"Using a laptop and a simple RFID broadcasting device, they tricked the system into letting them fill up for free."
:-)
As in so many things on slashdot, the definition of "free" matters here. In this case, it could mean
1) no one was charged for the fuel by ExxonMobil.
or
2) some other ExxonMobil customer was charged for the fuel, but the pumper was not charged.
or
3) the fuel was liberated.
It seems to me that #2 is by far the most likely, which is probably what the GP poster was getting at.
As for calling it "identity theft", as the GP did, that's daft. It's just a plain run-of-the-mill theft.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
"He programmed RFDump with the ability to place cookies on RFID tags the same way Web sites put cookies on browsers to track returning customers. With this, a stalker could, say, place a cookie on his target's E-ZPass, then return to it a few days later to see which toll plazas the car had crossed (and when). Private citizens and the government could likewise place cookies on library books to monitor who's checking them out."
This makes no sense. Either he has to get access to the library/E-ZPass data (in which case no cookie is needed) or the library needs to be writing to the tag - which it doesn't do.
Can anyone invert the ignorant-reporter-transform which has been applied to this paragraph?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.