Your Groceries have been HAX0RED!

Apparantly, the RFID tags that one day may be on everything like the current barcode can be infected with a virus.

For fun, I'll quote the whole article and interject with red text.


Wednesday, March 15, 2006; Posted: 3:59 p.m. EST (20:59 GMT)

Scientists say just about anything can be tracked using radio tags.

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands (Reuters) -- Cheap radio chips that are replacing
the ubiquitous barcode are a threat to privacy and susceptible to computer
viruses, scientists at a Dutch university said on Wednesday.
Researchers at
the Amsterdam's Free University created a radio frequency identity (RFID) chip
infected with a virus to prove that RFID systems are vulnerable despite the
extremely low memory capacity on the cheap chips.

It amazes me how the system builds the incypherable and then goes into shock when people smarter than them figure it out.

The problem is that an
infected RFID tag, which is read wirelessly when it passes through a scanning
gate, can upset the database that processes the information on the chip, says
the study by Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo and Andrew Tanenbaum.
"Everyone
working on RFID technology has tacitly assumed that the mere act of scanning an
RFID tag cannot modify back-end software and certainly not in a malicious way.
Unfortunately, they are wrong," the scientists said in a paper.

Anti-computer anarchist of the world unite! The revolution is near!

Actually, this reminds me of the X-Files episode where Dana Scully has in her possession an implant chip that was found on a guy who said he was abducted. She is shopping for groceries and out of curiosity scans the chip in the counter when the teller isn't looking and he machine goes haywire. Receipt tape gets spit out, mumbled code goes over the display, the machine starts clicking and beeping and opening. It was funny but supposedly fiction. Not anymore!

"An RFID tag
can be infected with a virus and this virus can infect the back-end database
used by the RFID software. From there it can be easily spread to other RFID
tags," they said.
As a result, it is possible that criminals or militants
could use an infected RFID tag to upset airline baggage handling systems with
potentially devastating consequences, they said.
The same technology could
also be used to wreak havoc with the databases used by supermarkets.
"This is
intended as a wake-up call. We ask the RFID industry to design systems that are
secure," Tanenbaum said in a telephone interview.
RFID has been touted as
"The Internet of Things", in which anything from shampoo bottles to marathon
runners can be tracked using radio tags.
Civil liberty groups say RFID could
lead to an unacceptable invasion of privacy and argue that airline ticket
information could be used by law enforcement agencies and divorce
lawyers.

I resent that! Putting my chosen honorable career in the same sentence as divorce lawyers?! Please, we don't break up families. By the time the law gets involved the family has been screwed up for generations. (It is amazing how family begats family who turn to life of crime.) And I know, some divorce in society is a good thing. A woman shouldn't have to put up with an abusive husband. But the way they wrote it was pretty spiteful. They should have concerns though. Since liberal hell-holes like Illinois are seriously looking at putting in RFID tags to track and monitor guns.

Metro , Germany's biggest retailer, said at the CeBIT technology
trade show it plans to save 8.5 million euros ($10.1 million) annually by using
RFID to track stock from suppliers and at its flagship Future Store in Rheinberg
town.
Industries in which tracking goods is crucial such as pharmaceuticals,
governments, logistics, airlines and manufacturing already use RFID
technology.
A recent study by ABI Research found that 10 drug products are
expected to have RFID tags on a large scale this year.
The cost of making an
RFID tag is about 14 euro cents today and needs to fall, Metro's head of
technology Gerd Wolfram said.
But Ian Furlong, manager of Intel's Solution
Services division for Central Europe, said at CeBIT that the price of RFID tags
was "rapidly falling toward the 5 euro cent mark".
Andrea Huber, managing
director of Informationsforum RFID, a German group raising public awareness
about the technology, said most companies were waiting for the price of tags to
fall to 1 euro cent before they start widespread use.

Mark my words people. Soon these babies will be inbedded in your driver license, your auto tag, your cell phone, even your clothes. If someone wanted to they would be able to track you pretty much anywhere. Before you say I'm crazy, just remember that the average grocer wouldn't even think of tracking everything they ever sold ten years ago, and that has now come to a reality.

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