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Apple Hacker Charlie Miller To Demo Dangers of Near-Field Communications
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's hacker nemesis Charlie Miller, who the company banned from its app store developer program, apparently hasn't been waiting around for his suspension to be lifted. His latest pet project is hacking near-field communications (NFC), and at Black Hat USA in Vegas this month, he will demonstrate the dangers of using your smartphone to pay your cab fare. (But when his Apple 'sentence' is up, look out)."
He's one of the guys that proved Apple isn't so unhackable and "immune to viruses" after all. He does have a point that NFC technology is too new to know whether it's safe, and honestly, I'm glad someone like him is on the case to determine just how exploitable it is. I've already had my bank account cleaned out once because of a hack into a store's debit card system.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
So there I am standing at the gas station yesterday, and I catch a quick glimpse of one of those ad's on the TV screen offering to give you 5 cents off per gallon if you pay at the pump with NFC through your phone. I'm a bit amused by this as right next to it is a sign saying not to use your cell phone at the pump with a funny symbol of fire next to it. Curious as to the contrary suggestions, I look at the fine print of the NFC ad where it basically says "for your safety, you can only use this as a single pump" or basically trying to manage the risk by only using it briefly. This is somewhat funny as they can't seem to make up their mind as to whether is it safe, or isn't it?