RFID tags "vulnerable to hackers"
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RFID tags, widely used by retailers to protect and track their goods, could be vulnerable to hackers, according to a top consultant.
29 July 2004 RFID tags, which are expected to be widely used by retailers to protect and track their goods in just a few years' time, could be vulnerable to hackers, according to a top consultant.
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The warning was given this week at a security briefing in Las Vegas, Nevada by Lukas Grunwald, a senior consultant at RFID software supplier DN-Systems Enterprise Solutions. The company has just announced the release of RFDump, a program that enables users to read and display data held by an RFID tag and also to modify the user data using a text editor.
Grunwald admitted: "This is a huge risk for companies. It opens a whole new area for shoplifting as well as chaos attacks." However, the software can also be used for customers to protect themselves, he said.
The potential impact of hacking an RFID tag will worry retailers: a thief could mark down the price of an expensive piece of jewellery, for example, before paying for it; or an underage hacker could illegally buy an adult movie by switching the RFID tags.
RFID - or Radio Frequency Identification - is a generic term for chips that use radio waves to automatically identify individual items. Experts say that, if the tagging data were changed, retailers would find it difficult to both detect and fix the problem.
The crux of the problem, says Grunwald, is that the retailers who will be using the technology don't understand how it works.
Solving the security problem will not be easy, according to Grunwald. While encryption could be used to hide data from unauthorised snoopers, he says, not many RFID chips can handle the task of crunching cryptographic keys. RFID tags that can handle encryption are much more expensive - and cost is already an issue preventing more widespread adoption of RFID.
