RSA Creating RFID Blocker Tag 328
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.
It's Time... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's Time... (Score:2)
Re:It's Time... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's Time... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's Time... (Score:2)
Also you could put a couple of CCD cameras on the outside of the bag and an OLED screen on the inside. Wear 3-d glass to get a sterio image. For the truly paranoid, put a CCD on the back of the bag as well.
Re:It's Time... (Score:4, Funny)
The EPA won't be happy... (Score:5, Funny)
That's an improvement (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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.
Re:That's an improvement (Score:3, Insightful)
All we need now is for the courts to rule that tin foil is somehow a violation of the DMCA under the "circumvention" provision.
When tin foil is outlawed, only the outlaws will have tin foil!
In Soviet Russia, RFID Blocks you!
Re:That's an improvement (Score:3, Informative)
This is from working at Kennedy.
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.
Re:That's an improvement (Score:2)
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:2)
Re:Work part time from parking lots. (Score:2)
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.
Arms race (Score:5, Funny)
Not necessary... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not necessary... (Score:3, Funny)
Probably the Patriot Act. That way they can just label the RFID blocker a Terrorist.
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.
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).
Re:Arms race (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Arms race (Score:3, Insightful)
IIRC, it *HAS* to be able to decrypt the DVD because standard burners can't write the CCA key. Kinda like how burning bit-perfect copies of PlayStation games is useless for an unmodded system.
I wish these people would get over themselves. They should be THRILLED I want to make backups of their crappy movies. Actually, I don't want backups. I'm looking for DVD-to-MP3 ripping so I can listen to my favorites at work like Office Space, the Simpsons, South Park, Princess Brid
Re:Arms race (Score:3, Insightful)
What I plan to do is backup all of my 300+DVDs (yes, the MPAA has made, and continues to make, a lot of money off me!) to a RAID, sans FBI warnings (which i've seen plenty of times already), trailers (which i've seen plenty of times already) and other stuff that doesn't work properly on my DVD player (ie. temporarily breaks the "next chapter" and "menu" buttons). Then I can watch any of the movies I have b
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
Where can I get one of those bags? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where can I get one of those bags? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where can I get one of those bags? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where can I get one of those bags? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where can I get one of those bags? (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't until you cross the price line where people think YOU are being unfair to them that they will prefer to steal it.
This is what allows unattended kiosks to function at all, or displays in fro
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
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)
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.
Re:If I'd tried it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, think of it from a more profit-centric vein.
Once they get all of that in place, then it would be trivial to have what you need as your medication also on an RFID, which would be hooked up to a despensing machine of some sort, and *poof*! No humans needed in the process at all. Suddenly all of those millions of dollars being wasted on employ
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.
Re:Low Tech Version (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Low Tech Version (Score:5, Informative)
Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Next up- RFID blocker blockers (Score:2)
Re:Next up- RFID blocker blockers (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I was trying to make a joke. Just the same, I'll bite -- cause I happen to have some experience with this. Radar detectors are only illegal in VA and Washington DC (in the US, anyway). In these places they use VG2 (and other) detector detectors. However, it's illegal to scramble radar or (AFAIK) detector signals -- actually highly illegal. No
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.
Re:Why Indeed (Score:2, Funny)
Yah... thankfully I only suffer from rational paranoia... not like those poor unfortunates you mention...
hey, how did you know the Dart is green anyways?? ... you-you're one of THEM, aren't you ... NNNOOoooo...
Great (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:new restrictions (Score:2, Funny)
--Best Buy employee
"Is it just me, or does that guy look like he's wearing a coat stiched together from shopping bags?"
RFID Blocker? No, RFID Nuker! (Score:5, Insightful)
you've already got a nuker (Score:3, 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.
Linky linky (Score:4, Informative)
Now that you've posted you can't mod me up though. :)
This sounds kind of stupid, but... (Score:2)
Although you really should have to do something like that, I would think that it would block the signal.
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!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How about foil-lined bags? (Score:3, Informative)
What is a Faraday Cage?
A Faraday Cage is the phenomenon that occurs when you surround an object with a conductor (read: metal), basically stopping all charge from entering/exiting conductor.
Here is a simple decution of why:
Gauss's Law [gsu.edu] states when a conductor is charged the charge resides on the surface of the object--with a solid metal sphere, all the charge would be sitting on the outside surface.
Now imagine a hallow sphere: The charge can only be on the surfa
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.
Ya, right .... (Score:2)
I want it! (Score:2)
Someone's trying too hard... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Someone's trying too hard... (Score:5, Informative)
this would probably require a legislative change (Score:3, Interesting)
how powerful are RFID tags anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or perhaps...
<conspiracy> It sounds to me like RSA actually has some other use in mind for these tags. </conspiracy>
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.
Re:RFID on drugs? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Stupid example? (Score:3, Interesting)
1984: Since when do people want an entire television channel devoted to videos of musicians singing and dancing?
1974: Since when are terrorists going to attack airplanes?
Just because it isn't happening now, doesn't mean it's not right around the corner. C'mon dude, get your head out of the sand.
Just the thought of these tags gives every Walmart exec a permanent erection, from the distribution department to the ad department, and
Does solve one issue! (Score:2)
Hang on a sec... (Score:2, Interesting)
SO WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT OF THE TAGS IN THE FIRST PLACE!?!
If I have to take the bottle out of the bag to show it to the pharmacist or cashier or whoever when I want to get a refill or pay, why not just put a goddamn BAR CODE on the stupid bottle!?! There! Done! I show you the bottle, you do something with it. Bam! Just like what we have today! No extra cost! No upgrades! No new hard
Tin Foil Suits (Score:2)
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)
Re:Interesting, but unlawful (in the U.S.) (Score:3, Informative)
You're right, as far as actively transmitting goes. But something passive (like stuffing an RFID tag into an ESD bag or maybe even tinfoil) would not contravene this regulation.
Here's the text...
Title 47, CFR Section 15.5 General conditions of operation.
(b) Operation of an intentional, unintentional, or incidental radiator is subject to the conditions that no harmful interference is caused and that interference
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.
Breaking News: SCO patents tinfoil bags (Score:2, Funny)
Who said its supposed to? (Score:2, Insightful)
First, enlighten us and tell us what the "important RFID issues" are.
Then, tell us why this device was supposed to resolve them, and didnt.
I can see Winona Ryder now... (Score:2)
If I had only waited a few years to steal.
A pack of Marlboros will do the same thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
RFID Jammer (Score:3, Funny)
I know people who would buy one just to be difficult, others because they are smart.
ls
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.
Important problems? (Score:3, Funny)
The fact that RSA can't make any money off it!
OT: cell-phone blocker (Score:3, Insightful)
Time for a little reality check.... (Score:3, Informative)
There are a couple ways to easily defeat the chips:
1) put the product inside of a foil lined bag. Doesn't even have to be heavy foil, any slightly metalic foil will block the RF signal to the point that the tag cannot be read.
2) Hold the product close to your body. The water in your body absorbs the RF signal, silencing the backscatter RF signal.
3) Put two standard RFID chips close together and the antennas will 'shadow' each other, blocking the signal from both.
From my experience it is harder to read the tags than it is to not read the tags. (the fact that you can read a tag is almost a miracle in itself) To build an entire chip to defeat an RFID chip is just stupid.
RSA is just looking for something else to patent, like they did the RSA algorithm.
Nothing here...move along
Tagging Meds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Excuse me, but why would they put RFID tags on items like medicines and then design bags to block them from the view of the RFID system? Why not, uh...just not tag them in the first place?
The more I read about this RFID thing, the more I'm thinking the idea just hasn't come along to the point where it has to be. Obviously, if these issues are getting discussed at a high level, we need to put something in place that's a bit more targetted to the problem: we want to be able to read items for a specific purpose, and no other purpose. Walk out of a store with items, get automatically charged to the credit card = good. Someone sitting in the parking lot with an RFID reader able to tell you just walked out with Preparation H, herpes medication, and a coffee enema kit = bad.
I'm betting that the propeller-heads among us have the capability to solve this problem, technologically I'm talking. Also, do we have to start out tagging everything? Why not just tag the non-controversial items? Let's not start with the Complete Homeopathic Colon Invasion Toolkit (TM), or people themselves. Let's start with something a bit more pedestrian and refine things from there...
sev
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.
Lets make it even more lame (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't have it both ways! (Score:3, Insightful)
Anti-XRay Specs (Score:3, Insightful)
a) Get used to having your every move recorded in a giant marketing/antiterrorism/conformity database. Ignore little annoyances like being IRS audited every year because you checked the wrong books out of the library.
b) Buy and continuously upgrade your array of privacy-protection technology.
c) Live in a shack in the hills and deal only through barter.
d) Armed revolt.
I don't personally find any of these attractive.
Re:why not just make a metal mesh bag? (Score:2)
Re:Is this secure? (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of it like the safety seal on over-the-counter medications. Is that plastic doohicky ironclad proof that some loony hasn't poisoned your NyQuil? Of course not -- there're always ways to tamper with a bottle. But at least the seal raises the bar, so that only persi