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RFID Personal Firewall

Posted by samzenpus on from the just-for-you dept.

JanMark writes "Prof. Andrew Tanenbaum and his student Melanie Rieback (who published the RFID virus paper in March) and 3 coauthors have now published a paper on a personal RFID firewall called the RFID Guardian. This device protects its owner from hostile RFID tags and scans in his or her vicinity, while letting friendly ones through. Their work has won the Best Paper award at the USENIX LISA Conference."

11 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Popups. by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh, great. I can just imagine walking through the mall and then being bombarded by all these popups. "Would you like Macy's to be able to access your RFID tags? [Ok] [Cancel] [X] Always Allow"

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    1. Re:Popups. by chroot_james · · Score: 4, Funny

      What about "would you like Macy's to have no idea you're stealing their stuff? [yes][no][always][never]"

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      Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
  2. Well... by Steppman2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I guess whit officially makes them white-hats, however, I'd still be worried about the ability to spoof a legitimate rfid or steal one and deactivate this firewall. Things that are considered by many to be foolproof make things that much worse when they fall through...

  3. Demo Video by AugustZephyr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Video of The Guardian in action: http://www.rfidguardian.org/videos/rfid-guardian-0 250.mov

  4. Old News by Mike89 · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is either old news, or there is some other reason the website looks like it's from 1996.

    1. Re:Old News by ParaphiliaNOS · · Score: 3, Interesting

      My assumption is either the staff are hardware people or have just prefer the security of static HTML.

      Staff: www.rfidguardian.org/people.html

  5. KISS by khafre · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If people are worried about others reading RFID tags at will, why not add a mechanical switch to the tag that must be pressed for the tag to power up? Just insist on it. If it doesn't have it, it goes in the microwave. Sheesh, add a cheap membrane switch, not a firewall.

  6. Attack Barriers by blueZhift · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This reminds me of the anime Ghost in the Shell wherein people use sophisticated attack barriers to defend their cyberbrains from unwanted intrusions. It seems that we are approaching the need for personal firewalls much faster than anticipated driven by the desire of world governments to more closely monitor their citizens as well as consumer desire for more personal electronics. I'd say we probably have only a year or two before implantable cell phones/accessories start making an appearance. Soon thereafter the first viruses targeting those systems will show up. So the personal firewall business should be pretty good.

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  7. Link to PDF by tttonyyy · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those that want more detail than the videos provide:

    http://www.cs.vu.nl/~melanie/rfid_guardian/papers/ acisp.05.pdf

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  8. Re:Faraday Cage by Cruise_WD · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Makes sense, since that's a common strategy for dealing with spam: Block anything except emails from a known source.
    That comment just triggered an odd thought in my head... ...in the future, will we look back at spam gratefully, for all the practice it's given us in blocking unwanted intrusions into our systems in a (realtively) benign way? Or does it just demonstrate how easily the majority of people will ignore privacy and real security and make life hell for the rest of us?

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  9. But is she hot? by pestie · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, yeah, RFID, mark of the beast, firewall, virus, buzzword... whatever! This is Slashdot, and the important question is whether or not this Melanie Rieback chick is hot. 'Cause everyone knows that hot geek girls are the wet dream of every red-blooded male Slashdotter. And thanks to the magic that is Google, the answer appears to be, "Not bad... not bad at all!"