News: EU biometric RFID scheme unworkable
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European plans for biometric passports and visas have been derailed by, er, European plans for biometric passports and visas.
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How can they tell with no readers, anyway? Analysis Widespread reports (proving at least that the press and opposition parties can speed read executive summaries) damn the Identity &amp; Passport Service for only securing a two year warranty for a product with a ten year lifespan. Ah, but that's by no means the only thing about the project that's broken.â¦
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A effort by a Seattle company at Black Hat DC to demo a device that easily hacks data from a popular RFID-based ID card system has been met by a patent-infringement claim. Meanwhile, legislators attempt to wrap laws around the security issues.
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Fear of a Black Hat A presentation on the security shortcoming of RFID technologies was pulled at the last minute from a Black Hat conference this week.â¦
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Interim microfiche system unusable, say researchers of births, marriages and deaths.
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roundupThere's no question retailers love RFID. But will problems of privacy and unreliability prove to be too great?
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The United States plans to issue passports with personal data stored on radio frequency identification chips. The documents would be harder to forge, but might leave holders vulnerable to identity theft. By Ryan Singel.
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Proposals for identity cards and a population register are opposed by Britain's information watchdog.
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The drives from LaCie, use biometrics to restrict access to data and will not work if they've been removed from the case and are plugged into another machine.
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You will comply The European Commission has warned Microsoft it could face further penalties over what it calls "unreasonable pricing" of interoperability information.â¦
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CNET News.com recently ran a report on companies with technologies that involve implanting RFID chips under people&#39;s skin or inside a bracelet.
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(InfoWorld) - A planned talk on RFID security by a security researcher has been pulled from this week's Black Hat Federal security conference after secure card maker HID claimed the talk violated the company's patent rights and threatened to take legal action against Chris Paget, the researcher, and IOActive, Paget's employer, if the talk went forward. The company decided to cancel the talk after all-night negotiations with HID collapsed, said Josh Pennell, CEO of IOActive. In response, Black Hat organizers were forced to tear materials out of printed show proceedings and will instead present a discussion by a representative of the ACLU on the criticality of RFID security, said Jeff Moss, founder and director of Black Hat. A spokeswoman for HID did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The incident recalled a 2005 dispute over a presentation at Black Hat in Las Vegas involving Cisco Systems and Michael Lynn, a security researcher who worked for Internet Security Systems at the time. IOActive's decision to abort their presentation follows days of tense negotiations between the two companies, after HID became alarmed about Paget's discussion, "RFID for beginners," which was to address widespread security issues with the implementation of RFID in proximity cards that are sold by HID and other companies. Paget's RFID cloning device was on display at the recent RSA Security Conference in San Francisco, where he demonstrated for InfoWorld how the device could be used to steal access codes from HID brand proximity cards, store them, then use the stolen codes to fool a HID card reader. Paget's presentation at Black Hat Federal would have includedÂ  schematics and source code that attendees could use to create their own cloning device, and a discussion of vulnerable implementations of RFID technology in a wide variety of devices, Paget told InfoWorld at RSA earlier this month. HID claimed that Paget's talk would infringe upon two patents the company owns, one dating to 1991 and another dating to 1992. Both cover methods of detecting RFID signals between a transponder embedded in a device and an "interrogator," according to a source familiar with HID's claims. Pennell and others doubted that such broad patent claims could be used to stifle free speech, but said that the legal pressure mounted by HID, a subsidiary of Swedish firm ASSA ABLOY, was too much for his small, Seattle-based consulting firm to withstand. "If we say anything, HID will sue. These large companies have lots of resources, so they can find [legal] matter with pretty much anything," Pennell said, admitting disappointment at the failure to reach an agreement with HID. "It's always been IOActive's intent to help people with security," he said. Chris Paget said that, unlike Lynn's sophisticated hack of Cisco's IOS operating system, the RFID cloning devices he built were simple devices concocted from around $20 in off-the-shelf parts purchased on eBay. "This thing is simpler than a Furbie," he said, referring to the plush electronic play toy of years past. Moreover, the HID patents in question are public documents, containing all the information needed to build the RFID cloner, he said. "This is not something new that we're doing. HID has known about this for about two years, if not longer," Paget said. Indeed, HID marketing materials for its Smart Card technology notes that "by using diversified unique keys and industry standard encryption techniques, the risk of compromised data or duplicated (smart) cards is reduced," and that "these security measures are not implemented in proximity cards, giving contactless smart cards a significant security advantage." While it's possible to make secure RFID devices that can store sensitive information, the HID proximity cards that use it are not secure, and customers who use the cards need to know that, Paget said. "Our intent was to disseminate information so people could make informed decisions about RFID technology they're deploying. For example, whether to deploy a proximity card with a secondary factor like a biometric or PIN [personal ID number]. But we've been prevented by HID from discussing that, and we believe it's detrimental to the security community," he said.Â  Nicole Ozer, technology & civil liberties policy director at the ACLU of Northern California, said that the work IOActive was doing was vital and that, while the group supports the enforcement of patent law, "free speech must be protected and not "trampled by the overzealous use of patent law." Government agencies, including the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Homeland Security, have all raised concerns about RFID security, even as they issue guidelines for using RFID in passports and other documents, she said. "It's particularly important that the government and the public have all the information on RFID technology. The use of RFID without the proper protections could jeopardize privacy, security, and public safety," she said. For Moss and Black Hat, which is now part of CMP, the decision by IOActive to cancel Paget's talk was a discouraging reprise of the controversy two years ago over Michael Lynn's talk in Las Vegas. Show organizers, once again ripping pages out of conference proceedings at the request of IOActive, and recalling CDs containing copies of Paget's presentation. "We're supporting IOActive," Moss said, noting that CMP had its legal team working on behalf of IOActive to see if a solution could be reached. "I'm not sure if it was part of HID's strategy to drop a bomb at the last minute, but it really screwed up our conference strategy," he said.
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Still horribly intrusive, though A Home Office minister has said the cost of the proposed ID card could be dramatically reduced if the government used its existing databases as a foundation for the scheme.â¦
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Plans for a wider rollout of identity cards to British nationals appear to have been delayed for three years.
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Also: Tactile passwords could stop ATM 'shoulder-surfing'
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As passports equipped with RFID chips are adopted more widely around the world, successful attempts to crack them are on the rise as well. Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. have already reported compromised data, but countries such as New Zealand remain unconcerned about such threats. But what if the goal wasn't data theft but detonation?
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Count them in, count them out, count them all about... Immigration Minister Liam Byrne this week unveiled - to a certain amount of derision - his vision of the ID Card scheme as some sort of 21st Century equivalent of the 19th Century railway network or the 20th Century national electricity grid. It will be pervasive, and in 20 years time it will be a great British institution, "part of the fabric of British life."â¦