Slashdot Mirror
RFID Guardian Protects Your Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "A new device devised by Amsterdam graduate student Melanie Rieback is designed to serve as a portable firewall for RFID tags. The portable battery-powered RFID Guardian uses an access control list to filter RFID queries, blocking queries that aren't approved. Rieback, who is also known for being the first researcher to develop a proof of concept RFID virus, hopes to offer version 3.0 of the RFID Guardian to the public at cost."
It is harder to forge but not because of some stupid restriction like "the stuff is harder to get". Any fool can write a RFID tag with quite reasonably priced equipment as well. The security actually comes from the cryptographic hash of the digital data also on the RFID tag. Therefore, if the digital data matches the physical printing of the data, and the cryptographic hash checks out, then you have within a good degree of certainty that the passport is legit. Of course, who knows if the secret hashing algorithm has been leaked or not, but that's a totally different concern.
With that said, a wireless technology is completely stupid for this sort of application. Any official checking a passport is going to be physically handling it anyway, so what's wrong with requiring a physical connection, like that in a smartcard?
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous