Feds At DefCon Alarmed After RFIDs Scanned

FourthAge writes "Federal agents at the Defcon 17 conference were shocked to discover that they had been caught in the sights of an RFID reader connected to a web camera. The reader sniffed data from RFID-enabled ID cards and other documents carried by attendees in pockets and backpacks. The 'security enhancing' RFID chips are now found in passports, official documents and ID cards. 'For $30 to $50, the common, average person can put [a portable RFID-reading kit] together,' said security expert Brian Marcus, one of the people behind the RFID webcam project. 'This is why we're so adamant about making people aware this is very dangerous.'"

Comments

Misleading post text...

[sifi]

Federal agents at the Defcon 17 conference were shocked to discover that they had been caught in the sights of an RFID reader connected to a web camera...

erm... not quite what the Wired Article says:

But the device, which had a read range of 2 to 3 feet, caught only five people carrying RFID cards before Feds attending the conference got wind of the project and were concerned they might have been scanned

Still I suppose the Feds have probably hacked into the Wired Article and fixed that one...

Re:What do you bet...

[stoolpigeon]

It is still valid. After returning from a long trip I went to bed and my wife did all my laundry from my trip, which included my passport and ipod nano in a shirt pocket. I was traveling again shortly after and tried to find someone who could tell me if it was still valid, but had no luck. I was going from the U.S. to Mexico and just figured I'd see how it went.

The agent tried to scan the chip and when it didn't work, just treated it like an older passport. I've gone out of the country with it again since then and had the same result.

I wouldn't recommend that approach, as is mentioned above, a hammer will do the job. It took me a while to dry out my passport then I had to leave it under a huge stack of books to get the pages flat again. Knowing that people keep them for 10 years makes me think that they must go through all kinds of things like that.

The nano took longer to dry out completely but still works.

I hope events like this (the scanning of the chips) keep getting attention so that something can be done before disabling the chip becomes synonymous with invalidating the document.