Wal-Mart Expands RFID Mandate

RFID Journal ^ | 8-17-03

[Conservababe]

Well, I can see the the union thugs at work here.

They would like nothing better than to have the coup of Wal Mart going union.

One would think that conservatives would see through this assault on Wal Mart, but they don't, it seems.

[Free Vulcan]

Since this is the THIRD time you have played the psychological card, I assume the debate is finished, at least the part concerning the facts at hand?

[Free Vulcan]

From a self styled debunker who mistakes a good character smear for a logical discussion of facts.

Go jump off a building _Jim, because if you wordsmith things real good, you just might be able to *fly*!

[_Jim]

Touchy, touchy!

Wound kind of tight for a 'paranoid' aren't you?

What's your current heart rate and respiration?

Are you perspiring profusely?

Are you listening to Alex Jones on 6890 or the 5 MHz frequency on shortwave - or are you logged into his program via the internet?

HOW are you so sure he can't 'listen back' the same way *YOU* listen to his program?

Does your PC's motherboard have one of those little electret mics that you can barely see?

DID you know that Alex Jones is really an MI6 and CIA operative who *spies* on people for them?

LOL!!!

[_Jim]

IF you were smart you would CAPITALIZE on this paranoia like Claire Wolf and Alex 'pinhead' Jones do, but sadly, you'll have to depend on that soup cup awile longer in order to feed that healthy case of paranoia that hangs like a monkey on your back ...

05/08/2003 Archived Entry: "Preparing to D-U-M-P RFID"

THE ROCKET SCIENTIST WRITES:

One thought to consider when evaluating the privacy invasion aspects of the RFID thing...if they are ubiquitious, then anyone scanning a wide area will be getting a whole bunch of data. Snipping them out and carrying a bunch of them around might be kinda fun. "My god Burt, this gal is carrying 4 pairs of bluejeans, 100 frozen dinners, and a refrigerator, and a snowblower!"...

I love the way this guy thinks.

Everybody who cares about privacy knows by now that we're soon to receive a little bonus with virtually every purchase we make -- a radio-frequency ID chip (RFID) woven into our undiewear, embedded into our bedding, planted in our pot pies, buried in our books, dug into our drugs, and tucked into our tampons. Manufacturers are lining up to contract for billions of such chips, even though the tech standards aren't quite "there" yet. The Gnomes of Euro announced long ago that, as of 2005, every scrap of their currency will carry an RFID chip woven into its fibers. (The dollar won't be far behind.)

EVERY SINGLE ITEM WE EVER BUY, EVERY BILL THAT EVER PASSES THROUGH OUR HANDS will carry a unique idenifying number. And these numbers will be scannable and trackable for the life of the item, unless the chip is "switched off" or destroyed. And The Rocket Scientist isn't kidding; industry groups really do have ambitions literally to set up a network of scanners -- in airports, seaports, along highways, in stores -- yes, and in homes -- that would tell them where their product is at any given time. And oh, goodie, wouldn't the feds also love THAT?

In anticipation of this privacy-slaughtering Blitzkrieg whose forces are amassing on the borders of our lives, we should definitely be developing exactly the kinds of defenses The Rocket Scientist suggests.

Others include:

• Wrapping your money in aluminum foil (an alternative to wearing an aluminum-foil beanie yourself, even if the times are becoming that paranoia-inducing.
  
• Passing magnets over items you bring home from the store
  
• Micro-zapping anything that can handle being nuked (as The Rocket Scientist said yesterday) -- including your post-2005 currency
  

You could also boycott RFID-tag users -- as the heroic CASPIAN has been leading a boycott of Benetton, the first clothing manufarcturer to go for the chips. Benetton partially backed off. But everybody from my beloved Wal-Mart to General Electric, thinks these chips are the greatest thing since surveillance cameras. Stopping them altogether, or even getting genuine privacy protections built into them, might be like trying to hold back the tide.

Problem is -- aside from the fact that you just can't use magnets or microwaves on everything -- you may not even know where the chips are, since they can literally be woven into fabric. And my goodness, can any normal person really manage enough paranoia or enough caution to zap every item we ever purchase or are given? It's too crazy, too much. It feels paranoid even talking about such stuff.

And no doubt a fair percentage of readers are going, "Ho hum, so what? The chips are just for inventory control. Don't be such a weirdo."

But really, we can't over-estimate the intrusiveness of these little buggers. The random scanning The Rocket Scientist plots against so cleverly is part of the problem, and a huge one. But also think about this: You buy a controversial book and loan it to me. I'm busted on a federal littering charge ... or maybe for consumption of excess lipids or for failing to prostrate myself before a statue of Our Glorious Leader ... and I'm caught with the book. The book "tells" the feddies who owns it. You, Dear Reader, are suddenly in a criminal conspiracy with me. Or at the very least, you're under investigation for Consorting with Known Textual Terrorists. Same thing with money. Remember, on the day those chips are in our dollars, unless you faithfully nuke every bill, the entire transaction history of each bill becomes traceable. And even if you DO nuke the bill, if the guy before you didn't nuke it, it still might be traceable to you. The goals of the "cashless society" have been achieved even though we still have cash.

So don't be afraid. Be prepared. Don't get mad. Get your monkeywrench ready.

LOL!!

[_Jim]

**CASPIAN launches worldwide boycott of Gillette** ***********************************************************************

RFID tags in Gillette product packaging have been used with hidden shelf cameras to snap photos of unsuspecting customers. Since Gillette has not responded adequately or truthfully to consumer concerns, we are advising consumers to avoid all Gillette products, including shaving items, Duracell batteries, Braun appliances, and Oral B products until further notice.

That nonsense is at: nocards.org!

[_Jim]

17-Nov-2002 / Dan Kaminsky ---- RFID Security

This post was written in reaction to this Slashdot story about Gilette's agreement to purchase half a billion RFID tags from the eminently fascinating and quite well named Alien Technology. I'd probably be rather annoyed at the name of the company if I hadn't watched their video regarding Fluidic Self Assembly...but lets just say they earned the name. Building LCD screens, a pixel at a time. Whoa.

Interesting. I just started doing some preliminary research on the security of RFID badge readers, based off of hazy memories that somebody had shown they were absolutely trivial to capture and replay.

Haven't been able to find that paper yet, but I can tell you what I've seen ain't great. Here's the story:

RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, and is essentially a Tesla-esque hack to allow contactless, bidirectional storage of small amounts of data on trivial circuits powered by the reader infrastructure itself. It's most commonly deployed nowadays as a replacement for magnetic-swipe oriented systems, as the lack of an exposed data surface and the absence of contact during scanning make RFID astonishingly reliable. The functionality is quite compelling, as Gilette's mass purchase shows -- what if you never needed to do inventory? What if you could just have a few sensors throughout your warehouse do a "mass ping" and acquire from the mass of replies precisely what needs to be restocked?

And it would only take a few sensors, too. Badge readers may only provide a few inches range, but there was a pretty big fuss a while back about RFID becoming functional at nine meters. At that point, you're quite a bit beyond the forklift knowing precisely what it's carrying. It's pretty clear that Gilette will make its $50M back within a year.

Oddly enough, Inventory Tracking is much, much better use of RFID than as a badging technology, even though the latter remains much more common than the former. Badging, like all trust management systems, attempts to differentiate the few who are trusted from the many that aren't.

The problem is, the many that aren't trusted aren't trusted for a reason -- they'll spy, they'll steal, they'll break stuff. Against that backdrop, mounting an attack against the security system isn't particularly unimaginable -- and here's where things get problematic.

You see, RFID tags make 802.11 look like Alcatraz.

Passive RFID systems are powered by the outside world -- the evil demon of Cartesian yore is handing over the battery. Given a cooperative RF field, the chip spews the same bits, over and over and over again.

When an employee is standing in front of the legitimate badge reader, this is a good thing. When an employee is sitting on the subway on his way to work and some guy walks by with a power source and 13.56Mhz sniffer in his briefcase...well, I guarantee you that briefcase ain't going to beep "Thank you for your access credentials, I'll be you now." All the attacker needs to do is forge a standard plastic badge and covertly trigger a transmitter when approaching the door -- there's no way for anyone to know the badge wasn't the source of the RFID transmissions! Just because your badge reader only works from a few inches away doesn't mean anyone's reader will. If all I need to do to get access to your entire corporate infrastructure is sit in the lobby "waiting for someone" as your CEO strolls by, you don't actually have a security system. You just have doors :-)

Now, I've got my suspicions of whether magnetic strips can be read at a distance, but to be honest, I'm more than willing to concede that it's a longshot at best (and a hilariously laughable descent into paranoia at worst). But RFID is not the kind of technology people should be carrying around with them at all times, assuming that as long as they still have their card, they still have the value the card represents.

To be fair, it's an extraordinarily difficult problem for TI et al to solve: The chips are necessarily trivial -- they're *powered* by the sensors, for crying out loud. Not only is it nearly impossible to build any kind of cryptosystem into a chip that small and weak, but the system itself would remain utterly defenseless against electrical skullduggery: Manipulating a chip's power source is one of the definitive ways of divining its cryptographic secrets, as Satellite TV hackers have been pointing out for quite some time.

MORE: http://www.doxpara.com/read.php/security/rfid.html

[Track]

There may be a lot of uses for RFID, but here in library land, it is used to help the patron check out, and return and pick up items by themselves, without the intervention of staff (if they so desire). It is also an inventory tool so we can take a handheld scanner to the shelf, and scan the markers, at which point they will tell us (via a dB query) as to what items have not circulated, missing, lost or misshelved. Just in case anyone out there starts thinking...also what you read, have read, checked out...etc... don't get in a bother. The only way anyone (read - police or law enforcement) can obtain the records of what you have or had read is with a court ordered subpoena, and then it is a long and arduous road for them to pursue. We here in libraryland pride ourselves on the fact that what you read is your business and no one elses. RFID will also make sure that items bought and paid for by your tax dollars stay in the circulation loop. Just in case anyone tries to 'forget' to check thier items out, when they pass through the 'gate', if the item scans as not being checked out, it will automatically 'painted' with an electronic signature, an alarm will sound (or not) and as long as the perp...er...patron has a library card, the items will automatically be checked out on thier card. Just in case they 'forget' to do the right thing.

[Free Vulcan]

Calling everyone who doesn't agree with you crazy was standard operating prodecure in the Soviet Union. Nice company you keep.

Oh boy, lookee what you dredged up. Perfect example of what I am talking about. You should be chasing ambulances for a living.

I imagine you still use vaccum tube radios, because IC's are just figments in the *minds* of conspiracy theorists.

[_Jim]

You're a riot!

I haven't had this much fun in ... well a day or two anyway ...

While we're both here, I'm just wondering - have you had a 'full body scan' done yet? You know - for implanted electronic apparatusususususususus?

MAYBE the question should be - HOW often do you go in for this procedure (SHADES of Mel Gibson and the movie Minority Report are running through my mind!)

[Free Vulcan]

Well you didn't let me down, another post with a fitful lack of substance, but much hype, smoke, and exaggerated gyrations.

That second article though, thanks, it only proves my point. I doubt it will take much to get around the identity theft problem, but that's not the issue. The issue is the ability to remote ID an object and therefore track it's movement via a network of sensors, which the article confirms, and that is precisely my point.

And, unfortunately for you, technology has long ago surpassed the vaccum tube era, and is going to keep advancing. They will work out the above mentioned bugs, I assure you.