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RSA Creating RFID Blocker Tag
Posted by
michael
on Tue Feb 24, 2004 01:10 PM
from the tag-you're-it dept.
from the tag-you're-it dept.
burgburgburg writes "RSA is introducing a new RFID cloaking system to guard secret data. The RSA Blocker Tag technology uses a jamming system designed to confuse RFID readers and prevent those devices from tracking data on individuals or goods outside certain boundaries. At its security conference, RSA demonstrated the blocking technology in a pharmacy setting. The pharmacist provides your prescription in a special bag with the Blocker tags. When the drugs are in the bag, RFID readers are blocked. Take them out, they're readable. The tags work by emitting radio frequencies that fool RFID readers into thinking they're receiving unwanted data, causing them to shun data from that source. RSA promises that this new technology will not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft-control systems or launch denial-of-service attacks." Maybe it's just me, but this seems to not address any of the important RFID issues at all.
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It's Time... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's Time... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:It's Time... (Score:4, Funny)
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The EPA won't be happy... (Score:5, Funny)
Work part time from parking lots. (Score:5, Interesting)
Combine that with RFIDs scanned as they leave the store, returning to the car, and I think we will have an incredible insight into the nature of those people's purchases. I'm sure some clever individuals will be able to build a portable scanner and have some underpaid kids key in the corresponding plates... won't this be wonderful!
Re:Work part time from parking lots. (Score:5, Insightful)
You think that's bad? Imagine a bomb which explodes when it detects the RFID tag in an American passport nearby.
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Arms race (Score:5, Funny)
Not necessary... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Arms race (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange how DVD copying software is being ruled illegal as it might be used to commit a crime while high velocity rifle rounds that penetrate police armour and kill people are not.
I guess Mickey Mouse is worth more than a pile of dead fbi men.
Parent
Re:Arms race (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange? No. The firearms industry has lots of money, the movie industry has lots of money, and politicians want lots of money. It makes perfect sense to me.
In the meantime, I'll continue buying both as I damn well see fit (although to date I've not seen fit to buy either).
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Re:Arms race (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Arms race (Off topic, just like its parent) (Score:5, Insightful)
If you consider the size of a buck deer, moose, or elk it quickly becomes apparent that if you allow sportsmen to hunt these animals, then you must have appropriate ammunition available that will dispatch them with a high probability with one shot. If you look at the rounds used in the past to hunt elephants you'll see they are huge are in fact not very common, and the rifles that can fire them are quite expensive, and even more uncommon. And, if you disallow hunting, then you have to reintroduce natural predators for game animal population control; look at New Jersy's experiment with elimination of deer hunting. Famine in the deer population as it grew, increase in disease in the deer population and increase in related vectors that directly and adversly affect other animals and humans.
If you want to change the rights of gun ownership in the US have the courtesy to attack the problem head on. Make an attempt to change the 2d amendment. Legislation that violates the 2d Amendment is just an affront to the legal basis that supports all our laws. When you do, remember that over 50% of US housholds own guns, legally. Guns are _so_ easy to manufacture that a plant in NJ was set up by organized crime and operated for years creating blackmarket firearms. We dropped (in WWII) leaflets showing how with simple mechanics tools a reliable fully automatic weapon (the so called "grease guns") could be made my resistance fighters. Make sure you address all the potential avenues for criminal creation of firearms when you try to make a legal ban of them. And then consider what other rights you have to give up to allow enforcement of those provisions to assure crimminals don't have firearms. And consider those who legally use a firearm in self-defense and assure a way to protect all the citizens all the times. I see very large budget increases for the new police state you'll need to implement this.
Feel free to mode this down along with the parent. Now if only he'd have suggested RFIDs in bullets or handguns
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abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this kind of technology is asking to be abused. Just like the cell fone signal jammers.
Re:abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
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goody bag (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds good to me.
Think Geek (Score:5, Funny)
If I'd tried it... (Score:4, Insightful)
It does seem like a reasonable application but, as the story says, isn't intended to address the broad range of objections. Still, protecting privacy of medical information is a step in the right direction... and what's to prevent me from applying it elsewise?
Re:If I'd tried it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, why the hell does your medical information need to be transmitted by radio to a fscking cash register? We can't train people to fscking READ anymore? Christ.
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Low Tech Version (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Low Tech Version (Score:5, Informative)
Seems like one of these silver bags would work perfect to put RFID enabled items in.
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Re:Low Tech Version (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Low Tech Version (Score:5, Informative)
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Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Next up- RFID blocker blockers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Next up- RFID blocker blockers (Score:5, Funny)
Circumvention of circumvention technology.
ERROR: DMCA buffer overflow
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I'll take one bag (Score:5, Funny)
Why Indeed (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I don't know about that. Seems this is just the thing to keep those guys wearing RayBans and black macks, lurking in an arcane sea-green Dodge Dart parked in the far corner of the drugstore parkinglot from discovering which medication you're on this week for your schizophrenia and irrational paranoia.
new restrictions (Score:4, Funny)
"Excuse me sir, could you please leave your stack of empty Walgreen sacks here at the counter"
--Best Buy employee
RFID Blocker? No, RFID Nuker! (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM has this (Score:5, Informative)
I submitted an article on this to /. a few weeks ago but it was rejected. Typical of /. to print every anti-RFID piece of FUD they get but to ignore anything that might indicate that some companines get it.
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How about foil-lined bags? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who told the criminals about Faraday cages? Did they learn it on the Internet? We need to remove this dangerous physics information from places kids and robbers can get it!
Couldn't you just always carry a blocker tag? (Score:5, Insightful)
When that happens, the reader tries to communicate with each tag individually, asking each for its next bit, which identifies the portion of a binary tree the tag resides on. However, when queried in the presence of a blocker tag, the blocker tag also responds, but with a "0" and a "1" bit, confusing the reader and preventing it from getting valid responses.
So couldn't you just always have a blocker tag with you at all times? Say you build one of these into your watch, for instance. Wouldn't that make a store's entire RFID system useless for the items you're carrying?
Also, blocker tags in bags don't do anything to protect your privacy once you take the item out of the bag; so if the RFID tag is on clothing, it would still be active while you're wearing it, but not while you're walking out of the store with it. Something about that definitely doesn't seem right.
Someone's trying too hard... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Someone's trying too hard... (Score:5, Informative)
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Cloaktec(TM) EMI / RFI Shielding Material (fabric) (Score:5, Interesting)
RFID on drugs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh...why would you need to put RFID tags on drugs or on drug containers in the first place?
If you're talking about prescription filling errors, that would be solved overnight by two things:
a)making doctors fill out prescriptions similarly to how most government forms are- one box per letter,capital letters(and when a prescription is rejected- the pharmacy makes it clear to the patient, AND the hospital, WHY. Doctors who can't be bothered to write clearly for the safety of their patient find themselves on the street).
b)training pharmacists better, holding them and their employers accountable for mistakes, and FDA(or state) conducted spot checks(we check health codes at restaurants to make sure Jenny the short order cook doesn't store that pot in the wrong place, but we can't be bothered to have someone fill a prescription a few times a month and check the results at a lab?)
If we're talking about theft(gillette's supposed reason for doing RFID), the major source of theft is armed(or claiming to be armed) robbers stealing powerful painkillers that have value on the black market.
RSA is grasping at straws here, finding a solution to the problems with a solution that was invented out of thin air(for a real problem). Say that 5 times fast.
Stupid example (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention a whole host of other problems. Seems RSA is looking for a new business model, seeing as their compression patent expired.
RFID nuking (Score:5, Interesting)
- The tags themselves have to be designed with fusible links (so that they can be overloaded & die), and
- The POS devices have the option of tag nuking, or maybe some area at the POS where tagged goods can be placed that will nuke them. (Many stores already have those pads that wipe out inventory control tags to prevent theft - same kind of notion.)
So, the question at a practical level is - is the industry actually responding to this, or is RSA's announcement just bandwagon hopping?Interesting, but unlawful (in the U.S.) (Score:5, Interesting)
ESD bags? (Score:5, Informative)
Why would it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would this address any of the important issues. The important issues are based in policy, not technology. Technology enforces policy.
A pack of Marlboros will do the same thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Like voting machines: why should I believe? (Score:5, Insightful)
Will there be a TRUSTe seal on the bag to tell me that I can trust the company that made the bag... just like the TRUSTe seal that certified that eToys would never sell their customer list?
Suppose I have a genuine RSA-branded blocker bags with an authentic non-counterfeitable TRUSTe hologram on it. How do I know it's working properly? Will the pharmacy supply a "blocker bag scanner," like the price-checking guns in Walmart, that let me verify that the blocker bag is actually working? Will the blocker bag scanner have a Commonwealth of Massachusetts weights-and-measures sticker on it to assure me that it's working properly?
If the answer is that I should just trust the pharmacist to be telling the truth when he says it's a blocker bag... well, why shouldn't I just trust the pharmacy not to do anything bad with the data they are capturing from all the RFID tags I'm wearing?
Just because CVS/Pharmacy gave a marketing firm a list of diabetic customers to sell to companies marketing products for diabetics doesn't mean they'd ever do such a thing again. Heck, that was way way back in dark ages... 1998.
These companies are all like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Trust us, trust us, trust us... even though we've betrayed your trust over and over again in the past, we'll never do it again.
Open-content solution? (Score:5, Funny)
Make storing customer personal information on such a tag a felony, even if the customer signs any forms indicating otherwise. Business can still use RFID for quick checkout, inventory management, etc.
Since we all have readers, we can doublecheck that the tags are, in fact, erased. I would suggest having readers all over the store, even on the way out. If they are not properly, totally erased, bring them back to the counter. Even 10% of customers doing it would provide major incentive to get the tags erased correctly, the first time.
In fact, why don't we walk around the store with RFID readers? That way we can check the real price of each item - no confusion or misleading shelf placement. If there is a rebate, that information should be on the tag.
Lastly, to achieve nirvana, all we have to do is require the wages of people who made the item on the RFID tags. That way the (now well informed) consumer can choose between shoes, clothing or other goods made in various countries - and actually be confronted with how little people earn in some places. Sure not everyone will care, but enough will.
Re:Where can I get one of those bags? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Where can I get one of those bags? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Actually it's not honesty and morals (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway... my point... ive seen the way their security operate and talked with them about it a bit.
From the moment you enter the store, you are on tape. They may or may not be watching you specifically... you just don't know. Rest assured they are watching somewhere in the store. They know what to look for, they know how to tell who to watch.
Who is the security guy? Well I will tell you, he is probably dressed well, but not like an employee. He/she wont wear the store colors, or a name tag, and he is watching the cash registers as much as anywhere else.
In fact, the store I saw had a very old system overall that hadn't been upgraed in years, not like all these new Best Buy stores. Yet still with that old system they could watch a cashier (what? you think the shoppers are the only people the security folks watch? notice the camera density by the checkout - those are for watching the clerks as much as you) and on a seprate terminal he could watch the transactions go by as the clerk scanned items and input stuff into he register to make sure the clerk wasn't putting through improper transactions or helping people steal from the store.
-Steve
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Re:That's an improvement (Score:5, Informative)
Tin foil lined bags!
According to the show, some of these shoplifting rings take millions of dollars worth of merchanise a year. So this method must be pretty effective. I love when people go through a ton of work and invest billions of dollars while ignoring something simple/stupid like tin foil.
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Re:That's an improvement (Score:5, Insightful)
They're more about inventory and process control. Store managers want to be able to walk down the aisle with their RFID-scanning laptop and instantly know how many of each item are there. Or, misplaced items can shout "hey, I'm on the wrong shelf!"
Or honest shoppers can take their stuff up to the self-checkout area, and the screen shows you whats in your bag and you sign off on it, rather than having to scan and rebag everything.
And, of course, the paranoid will tell you its so the CIA can scan you from a plain white van and know what kind of deoderant you use.
Shoplifters and thieves will always find a way around the system, so it doesn't matter.
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Re:That's an improvement (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure if that would do any good. Someone goes into a store and grabs something with an RFID, places it in their foil lined hidden inner pocket in their jacket, and walks out. When the item goes off the RFID master radar image, it maybe sets off an alert, so then someone has to physically walk to the shelf to see what happened. By then, the thief is long gone. Plus, they aren't exactly super high-power devices, I'm sure they occasionally don't hear the query or respond back in time, so you'd get lots of false alarms.
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