RFID Fingerprints To Fight Tag Cloning 59
Bourdain writes with news out of the University of Arkansas, where researchers are looking for ways to combat counterfeit RFID tags. Passive tags typically wait for a reader to transmit a signal of the appropriate strength and frequency before sending their own transmission. The scientists found that the amount of power required to trigger this varies quite a bit from one tag to the next, especially when many different frequencies are sampled. This and other physical characteristics give the tag its own "fingerprint" that is independent of the signal information stored in its memory, which the researchers say will facilitate the detection of cloned tags.
Potentiometer (Score:3, Interesting)
So if I have a pot wired across the power receiver, I can twiddle it until it matches. If people know the factors being sampled, they can adjust them.
Does this say the same at 55-70+ mph or just at (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this say the same at 55-70+ mph or just at much lower walking speeds?
What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just use a sensible crypographic authentication mechanism and be done with it. I guess that it is interesting from a "pure science" point of view but I'm not quite sure that this should be used to detect fake passports.
Re:What's the point? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
These are passive tags, i.e. ultra-low power consumption. You can't put any decent crypto on it.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Security enhancement at best (Score:1, Interesting)
full clone (Score:2, Interesting)
well, they'll just have to clone that parameter too.
Unless of course the industrial process used to create the tags makes each one of them a bit different,
hence defeating the identification in the first place.