🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 12 May 2006 01:46:31 -0400, Jon von Leipzig <Jonl@myday.com>
wrote:

>Ari Silverstein wrote:
>> On Thu, 11 May 2006 08:52:54 -0700, Joshua Putnam wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>>On one hand, nothing in the cited legislation says anything about 
>>>RFID, and RFID tracking seems like a ridiculous proposal that no 
>>>politician would expect to get away with.
>>>
>>>On the other hand, there's no legislation authorizing the NSA to 
>>>maintain a database of every single phone call made within the United 
>>>States, and it seems like a ridiculous scheme that no politician 
>>>would expect to get away with.
>> 
>> 
>> Now for the reality.
>> 
>> http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1951/1/1/
>
>That might impress laypersons, but not serious hackers.
>
>
>The RFID Hacking Underground
>http://tinyurl.com/s4dl8
>
>They can steal your smartcard, lift your passport, jack your car, even 
>clone the chip in your arm. And you won't feel a thing. 5 tales from the 
>RFID-hacking underground.
>
><snipped>
>"We believe the new US passport is probably vulnerable to a brute-force 
>attack," he says. "The encryption keys in them will depend on passport 
>numbers and birth dates. Because these have a certain degree of 
>structure and guessability, we estimate that the effective key length is 
>at most 52 bits. A special key-cracking machine could probably break a 
>passport key of this length in 10 minutes."


"Estimate... at most... probably... 10 minutes..."  That's sure
cutting-edge hard science you're quoting there.  Any equally reliabile
information on where the Easter bunny lives the rest of the year?
Inquiring minds want to know.