RFID chips can carry a virus...

...and can pass them onto the system that reads the chips.

So say scientists in Amsterdam.

CNN

 

Congratulations: they've learnt that data coming from a RFID chip does in fact need to be validated before you start processing it. Big freaking deal! Every other kind of tagging system has those validation measures to prevent malicious code being executed. If you had a particularly bad implementation you could do the same with a barcode.

However, the idea that it spreads to other RFID tags is assuming a lot. a) that the cards are writable - most of them aren't. b) that the database will write to them if they are "out of date" c) that the malicious code will survive processing in the database.

I'm sure the people conducting the research can clarify these points better themselves.

As for the points on privacy: yes, lets demonize the technology rather than it's application. It's CLEARLY the technology that's bad, not the people that use it. Whatever!

There also needs to be bit more of understanding as to what the RFID chip actually does. It's a close range transmitter, which is powered by electromagnetic induction. The only way you could track someones movements is if you had a "grid" of RFID scanners in the area you'd want to track them - which is impractical to say the least. A much, much easier way to do this would be to get a signal coming from that person (say, is that a microwave transceiver i spy in your pocket?) and triangulate it using 3 or more base stations.

Using the a cell phone you could pinpoint someones location, without needing to give them any RFID tags or anything.

airline ticket information...?? The information on an airline ticket isn't any less privacy invading as what an RFID chip would provide. The fact is that a "paper trail", not including those from technological areas like RFIDs, are a) much more evidence worthy and b) easier to come across. Parking tickets. Credit Card recipts. Bank recpits of any kind.

Let me illustrate a slightly more relevant point:

Oyster cards (used for traveling on the London Underground) are basically RFID chips with a pretty pattern on them. They are made by Phillips, and happen to be a MiFARE Pro card. They use asynchronous data transfer to manage credit. The ticket barriers hold table of authorizations, but no fare data. So, when you "touch in" your card is authorized, your entrance logged.

Once every hour or so, the station contacts head office to update fare information. Using timestamps and entry and exit locations, it will calculate the cheapest fare for that journey. However, rather than crediting the journey and deleting the entry exit locations, both are kept. So in effect TFL has a record of every single person entering and leaving the tube or bus network at any time. Of course, this is all kept as a matter of "security".

Someone with access to this information could really, really ruin your day. You could run analysis on the data and work out where someone worked, where they went at lunch, who they visit and how often.

I think that is probably more the point they were trying to get at. Airline tickets, in comparison, are relatively innocuous.

Oh and by the way, this is what's known as a hack. When you make a technology do something it wasn't designed for, you are hacking. Shouldn't these scientists be arrested or something? I wish I lived in the Netherlands..