Hacking the Oyster
Last year a story emerged that security researchers managed to skim information at a distance from an Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) card and clone it. This has ramifications for many things as the technology is used for, entry to secure buildings, passports and transport cards.
It is with transport cards, namely London's Oyster card that the issue has arisen again with another security hole found by Dutch researchers. They managed to clone an oyster card to a standard building security entry card which uses the same technology. They then travelled to London to test their clone, travelling for a full day on the London Tube with no problems.
Apparently the hardware required to skim the information is relatively cheap and can easily be used with a standard laptop, making RFID cards and passports vulnerable to anyone with know-how and inclination.
More detail about this story can be found in the following article: "Group Demonstrates Security Hole in Oyster Card".
Tags: clone, Hacking, Oyster Card, passports, researchers, RFID, Security
August 28th, 2008 at 10:10 am
[...] Tougher encryption and security is also a joke. In the programming world it is well know that if you can code it, you can hack it. Examples of so called unbreakable security are the DVD format and the security researchers cloning the new passport chips. [...]