Slashdot Mirror
Bugged Canadian Coins?
tundra_man writes "CBC has an article about RFID type devices in Canadian coins found on US Contractors. From the article: 'Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense.' The report did not indicate what kinds of coins were involved."
Wow, and I thought I was on the cutting edge by stamping bills and entering them into Where's George?
In fact, a April Fool's joke I recall was that WG had developed a way to track US dollar coins, with a machine that would emboss a unique serial number into the coin's smooth edge. The new project would be "Where's Sackie?"
Looks like the Canadian government is way ahead of the curve on that one. Better alert the folks at Where's Willy?, the northern branch of Where's George?.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I also read the article and thought WTF.
I seriously doubt anyone managed to mung currency and insert a real RFID unit.
What I do think however is that in a small percentage of coins they resonate at the same frequency as an RFID which would appear as though they were magical.
If you did infact hollow out a bit of a coin and replace some of the metal with an electronic bug the weight and bounce (striking against a piezo sensor) would cause such a difference any coin mech you inserted it into would reject it.
liqbase
well, for sure, it would make creating coin vending machines much easier to implement, mechanically. once i was in canada and received a coin that looked like this which i initially thought was fake, but believed later after reading online.
From the article:
"The report, which first came to light in a U.S. newspaper, has since been posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, an organization that tracks the intelligence world and promotes government openness."
Well, I don't see it on fas.org (search), and if its in a "american newspaper", its one that google news doesn't search.
Something just doesn't sound right about this whole story.... It makes no sense, and there's no other cites for it.
The coins may have been given in some immoral/illegal situation by Canada's equivalent of the CIA. Perhaps by one posing as a prostitute? Perhaps perhaps at the scene of a bribe (no, I'm not saying the coin itself is the bribe; but perhaps the bartender gave the bugged coins at the scene)? If the coins showed up on the person in a meeting with the contractor the next day you'd guess which members of the contractors team were present during the immoral activity.
Assuming that it was adhered, I could conceive how it could be accidental.
They probably got one of those poppy quarters from a few years ago and figured the painted on poppy was a listening device. I say produce the coins so the public and Canadian officials can see them or shut up. This has to be one of the most retarded stories I've read in awhile....transmitters in our coins....sheesh!!
The article didnt specify what the bug actually did
Im speculating, but I imagine it would not be impossible to minuturise an RFID reader to fit inside a coin with the intention to copy the RFID identity card which a defence contractor may carry on his person (In his pocket?). An attacker would then need to obtain the coin with the recorded ID information, I suppose.
It would be a simple matter to recreate the ID card giving an attacker access to a secured installation.
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
I haven't been a high energy microwave tech actively for quite a while, but i'm pretty certain thst with some $$ and an actual interest, I could read a passive rfid tag at about 100m. Might screw up some nearby cell phones, though.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
For the life of me, I can't figure a reason that somebody would do this. Coins change hands quickly and RFID has a pretty limited range.
If you RTFA article closely you'll see that the souce told the press that transmitters were found in coins.
Then (in paragraph 11) reporter notes that the type of transmitter was not disclosed. In paragraph 12 he starts speculating about RFID. The rest of the article (and possibly part of the preceeding section - along with the Slashdot headline) is based on the unfounded assumption that the transmitter IS an RFID-type device.
Which strikes me as totally bogus.
IMHO it's more likely that the "transmitter" found is a remotely-powered area audio bug, like "The Great Seal Bug", the martini fake olive bug, or the "diodes in the wall" bugs. Planted on a person it would bug his conversations and those around him until he spent it - hours or days later. (As you can imagine from the martini-olive bug, which is only useful while the spy is toting the martini, in some situations long-term bugging is an unnecessary bonus.)
Such bugs can be simple: A shaped cavity with a flexible membrane over it is one way to do it - the cavity resonates, giving a strong reflection, while the sound modulates the cavity's effectiveness, AMing the reflection. Another is just to fasten a diode to something that can be vibrated by sound. The diode frequency-doubles the reflected signal or mixes two of them to produce the sum and difference frequencies (sorting the diode's reflection from most ordinary reflections) and the vibration of it along the line between the bug and the monitor phase-modulates the return with the local audio. No fancy circuitry or local power supplies necessary.
I presume this one did involve at least a diode, or some semiconductor circuitry, since it was found in a radio scan - which is often done by looking for the frequency-multiplying and/or frequency mixing effect of diodes / semiconductor junctions. Finding a pure cavity resonator bug - or even identifying what it is when you have it - is a bitch.
Bugging the audio at a conference, or the conversations of a contractor at work on classified projects, would be worth planting a bug on him and having it there for only a few hours. After that, if he "spends" it, so what? (At least until they are noticed and a way found to identify them BEFORE the conversations to be monitored.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Maybe its just something simple like they added chips to a small sample of coins in order to track them round the mint.
Adding them to any processes after other coins are struck might allow them to see any bottlenecks in the factory line and therefore improve the flow of coins.
Just an idea, seems more sensible than being used to track a person, because the chips probably had a low detection range, and coins change hands so quickly as other people have pointed out.
That's of course true, the whole idea of RFID chips is they are inductively powered and don't have to carry their own power source.
(I happen to be a Canadian RFID researcher, of all things)
But the article sounds like BS to me. Let's say the coins did have an RFID chip on their surface, perhaps in one of the quarters with a poppy cut-out in the center (or the two dollar coin which also has a center that can come out). What would you DO with the "spy chip"? You're going to record audio or video? Fine... then do what with it? You don't have enough space to store it, and you can only transmit it a few feet away.
It might be a practical way to track where coins go, but I can't see how it could be used to "spy". It's really no different than say a serial number stamped on currency, which we do have on paper bills. I just don't see the point.
Either you only want to track that person for a very short amount of time, or you're really interested in tracking the money itself.
I doubt this is intended as a coinage solution for Where's Willy, the Canadian currency form of Where's George. And the duration of the track of an individual depends on when the subject is expected to make another purchase. And it doesn't have to be very long to get useful, potentially compromising information, or just get the subject close enough to a reader wired to an explosive device.
Scarier is the thought that such RF trackers are just the test run, gathering distribution data to see what will happen when they replace the RFID chips with tiny samples of Polonium-210 or other more deadly toxins.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
My guess is that it was just a proof-of-concept for one of the vendors looking to sell the technology to someone (although obviously not to the contractors involved), therefore it was irrelevant as to whether the coins were disposed of shortly, or ever. If someone had developed a method of tracking the RFID tags over distances of 10s or 100s of meters, it would make tagging and following someone much easier. Additionally, if the tags could fit in a coin, it's great evidence that they can be implanted in small everyday objects that wouldn't raise suspicion.
If I were a vendor, and I could say "Hey, I planted these devices on US personnel and was able to track them all over Toronto without raising suspicion (until much later)."
On the other hand, the fact that they were, in fact, discovered later sort of invalidates that claim. The object may well have been to have the individuals dispose of the coins before ever noticing they had been compromised.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere