WarCloning, the New WarDriving?

ChrisPaget writes "After my legal skirmishes with HID a while back, The Register has coverage of my latest RFID work — cloning Passport Cards and Electronic Drivers Licenses from a moving vehicle. Full details will be released at Shmoocon this weekend, but in the meantime there's video of the equipment and articles all over the place."

Comments

RFID on identification scares me

[sempiterna]

I'm very much afraid of government implementing rfid on a widespread level. I have to admit that if I was government, I'd probably push to do the same thing.

Having Big Brother being able to know who I am by walking into a door of the court house, or if a police officer pulls you over and 'scans your arm', really scares me.

The potential for abuse is tremendous.

Re:RFID on identification scares me

[steelcaress]

I always thought they should do more. I'm not particularly scared of it, but I always thought that since there's a massive amount of information available on you anyway, why not implement this in a useful way?

Go to a job interview, they could have a resume, letters of recommendation, supervisor comments, phone numbers, etc already on file. No more wasted paper or wasted time filling out the same info on different forms.

Go to a hospital, they could already have the meds you're on, anything you're allergic to, and any afflictions you currently suffer from along with symptoms, last blood pressure reading, x-rays, etc -- even if you've never been there.

Enlist in the military, they'd need things for that, including competencies, education, etc.

Insurance companies, well, unfortunately would have limited medical access.

The uses for a big pool of info, with limited access, would be massive. The best thing is that it wouldn't be available online -- it would be available on a data crystal or some other media capable of storing massive amounts of information. You could even have a retina scan or a galvanic skin sensor to make sure the right person has the medium, rather than a crook who ran off with your wallet or an identity thief. RFID doesn't scare me. I think it could be a step in the right direction. As a man who's tired of answering questions and filling out forms, I think this could be a boon, not a bane.

Re:RFID on identification scares me

[ushering05401]

Who knows what your prospective employer etc would see in your file?

Who knows if it would be true?

Oh wait.. there could be some sort of efficient appeals process to get improper notations removed from your file just as easy as fixing your credit history after getting ID jacked...

Boy, my grade school teachers didn't know how right they were when they threatened me with screwing up my 'permanent record.'

Re:RFID on identification scares me

[commodore64_love]

Go to a concentration camp; they could have a name, phone numbers, next of kin, final will and testament, etc already on file. No more wasted paper or wasted time filling out the same info on different forms. Just send them straight to the "showers" for processing.

Go to a job interview; they could have a genetic workup, list of potential diseases, previous health expenditures, current debt accumulation, etc already on file. No more hiring of people who are sickly & likely to aste company resources, or are deep in debt and potential thieves. They can be weeded out immediately.

Point:

Having information so easily available is dangerous. It's loss of power by the citizen & a gaining of power by the politicians and the corporations.

Why?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Right now the police can pull you over and ask for your license. Don't show it and you see the inside of a cell.

And while you're driving around your car has license plates on it which can be scanned from far further than RFID.

The potential for abuse is already there and has been for a long time.

One cool thing with new tech is that it lifts the bar for the scammers. With RFID you need a lot more than a photocopier and laminator to make a fake drivers license.

Re:Why?

[faloi]

With RFID you need a lot more than a photocopier and laminator to make a fake drivers license.

Yeah, you also apparently need a couple of hundred bucks worth of stuff. And the added "advantage" to RFID is that most people will probably actually believe it's secure and take the scan at face value, making it easier than ever to pass off fake ID most places.

Re:Why?

[NonUniqueNickname]

your car has license plates on it which can be scanned from far further than RFID

Very few people carry their car's license plates in their wallet or purses. For most of us, having RFID on our driver's license is akin to having RFID implanted in our skull.

Re:Why?

[icebraining]

Yeah, but I bet it's easier to make a RFID protected wallet than extracting it from your skull.

Re:Why?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Right now the police can pull you over and ask for your license. Don't show it and you see the inside of a cell.

Perhaps in other countries, but not the U.S. The Supreme Court decided (v. Prouse) that a discretionary, suspicionless stop for a spot check of a motorist's driver's license and vehicle registration was invalid. The officer's conduct in that case was unconstitutional primarily on account of his exercise of "standardless and unconstrained discretion." A generalized roadblock that stopped all drivers would be allowed, but only in cases of border security or sobriety checks, not other tasks such as narcotics search.

Re:Why?

[_Sprocket_]

Right now the police can pull you over and ask for your license. Don't show it and you see the inside of a cell.

And while you're driving around your car has license plates on it which can be scanned from far further than RFID.

Asking to see the license still requires asking. It also requires driving for one to be (legally) provided. RFID allows for scanning a crowd and (potentially) getting a crowd of identities in less than a second.

OCR on license plates are very doable if you control the conditions. Make sure the vehicle is going the desired location and mount the camera in the perfect position. Back that up with occasional human to try and work out those cases where OCR fails. With RFID you put up antennas in a few strategic locations and you cover blocks of traffic without worrying about angles, lighting, and other bothersome conditions.

The potential for abuse is already there. RFID makes it more efficient.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. you refer to has ceased to exist: http://epic.org/privacy/hiibel/. The officer still has to have "suspicion" but who isn't suspicious to a cop?

Re:Why?

[RiotingPacifist]

I suspect your laws are similar to what we have in the UK, in theory to pull you over / search you they need reasonable suspicion, in practice they can just make shit up.

My hat ain't enough

[sls1j]

Looks like I'll be getting a matching tin foil wallet to go with the hat.

Re:My hat ain't enough

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Interestingly enough, when I got my new Passport Card, it came with a little Faraday Cage sleeve (metalized mylar) with the instruction to put the card there when not in use. I don't remember getting anything like that when I got my (RFID carrying) Passport a while back, so maybe there's some realization of the problem on the issuing end...

Re:My hat ain't enough

[kaatochacha]

I just received a new US passport. The passport itself has a blurb about being shielded when closed. Don't know if this is true or not, as I haven't checked it myself, but the covers feel like there's something in them.

Re:My hat ain't enough

[Jherek Carnelian]

I just received a new US passport. The passport itself has a blurb about being shielded when closed. Don't know if this is true or not, as I haven't checked it myself, but the covers feel like there's something in them.

It is true and it is not. Building a faraday cage into the cover was one of the "concessions" they made in response to all the complaints about privacy issues. But... it only really works if the covers are tightly pressed together. Leaving it open a quarter inch or so may be enough to prevent official readers from picking up the RFID, but not enough to protect against someone with a reader with more juice - like anyone who is up to no good will certainly have.

WarCloning?

[spyder913]

WarDriving = Driving around finding open APs.
"WarCloning" = Driving around cloning RFID stuff.

Shouldn't it be "CloneDriving" or something else? Though I suppose all of them are equally dumb. So nevermind...

Good for crime fighting, scary for potential abuse

[hwyhobo]

Take a lesson from London video cameras and spread the RFID readers at each intersection, and now you can track everyone in the city remotely.

Protection

[riceboy50]

The first thing I did after receiving my RFID-embedded passport was to pick up one of these.

Re:Protection

[chill]

Really? The first thing I did was pick up one of these, which I already had on hand at the house. Mine is *guaranteed* effective. :-)

Re:Where are the FUNCTIONAL RF-blocking covers?

[Anonymous Coward]

For your driver's license, just use what I have for many years: an "Altoids" tin (or similar item). Perfectly sized for drivers licenses, credit cards, and other such things, and completely impervious to RF scanning technologies. I use one for my "wallet".

For a passport, well, they *did* have those jumbo tins a while back... ;)

Don't be scared

[Anonymous Coward]

We're safe. Cloning RFIDs is illegal.

RFID Gathering

[CaptCovert]

What worries me about all of this is not that the RFIDs can be picked up while driving around. A little consumer education (you are supposed to worry about who you give your SSN to, and you don't just leave your other PII laying around in plain sight usually) in the form of RF-blocking wallet linings will fix that. What I'm worried about is what happens in 5 years, when advances in RF technology (it is the new form of governmental ID, after all. Technology WILL follow suit) allow for hardware that I can hide on my person (antenna down the back of a coat lining, wired to a recorder in my pocket, or hell, dropped in the lining somewhere). At that point, all it takes is one man sitting in a train station or airport. You pull your ID out for scanning, and I harvest it. You may as well walk around with your SSN printed on your shirt.

I saw the video and it is inaccurate at best

[anand78]

The XR400 used in the drive through was a UHF reader. Reading a UHF tag is not as easy as the author described. All you have to do is put it against your body, and the salt water attenuates the signal, thus making the tag unreadable. Making such broad statements as scrap the whole real ID or national id, will be valid, if the author showed some substance.

Tin Foil Hat!!

[corsec67]

I think that is a VERY legitimate use of a tinfoil hat... /Couldn't resist.

Airport Demonstrations

[LuYu]

I thought about this when I first heard the news about RFIDs being included in passports -- and money. Now that there is a practical implementation, it is time for a bunch of privacy advocates to get a marquee style display and go to an international airport. They could stand outside of the arrivals customs area and scan and display people's personal information in order to demonstrate how completely these tags violate the passengers' Fourth Amendment rights.

The sign might look something like this:

Hello John Doe!
Your passport number is #########
Your SSN is ####-##-###
You are carrying two MasterCards, one Visa card, and one Diner's Club card.
You are carrying seven 100 dollar bills and ten 20 dollar bills. Say hello to Ben and Andy for us!
This information has all been made publicly available courtesy of Uncle Sam and your banks.
If you are offended by this sign, please contact your Congressmen as soon as possible.
If you would like further information, ask one of our friendly volunteers for an explanatory pamphlet!!

Have a Nice Day!

That should get people's attention. And it should be quite entertaining until the airport authorities figure it out. When they do, it would also be nice to point out that Freedom of Assembly is also an inalienable right!