Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of law, culture, technology, and politics. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Who's liable for "smart card" security breaches?
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 23:28:12 -0700
From: Hal Murray <hmurray@suespammers.org>
To: declan@well.com
CC: Richard M. Smith <rms@computerbytesman.com>,        Hal Murray 
<hmurray@suespammers.org>

Feeding >RFID crack< to google gets some interesting answers.

I don't remember seeing this mentioned in Politech (or anywhere else):

The RFID/DST scheme has been cracked.  Press Release is dated 29-Jan-2005.

http://rfidanalysis.org/
http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home05/jan05/rfid.html

It's used by:
   150 million vehicle immobilizer keys (including 2005 Fords)
   Exxon Mobil Speedpass
     seven million cryptographically-enabled keychain tags
     10,000 locations worldwide

That scheme uses 40 bit keys.  Obviously weak by today's standards.
But it's shipping on 2005 Fords so somebody obviously didn't do their
homework.

They used a bank of FPGAs to speed up brute force key search.
   2 weeks to find a key when running on 10 very fast PCs.
   16 FPGSs got 5 keys in well under 2 hours.
(Doesn't look critical, but probably lots of fun and a good way to get grad
students working on the project.)

The FAQ mentions lack of public scrutiny.  That seems to confirm my 
security-by-obscurity feelings for the new RFID-CC scheme.


-- 
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Posted by Declan McCullagh on Jul 17, 2005 in category privacy

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