Cellphone could crack RFID tags, says cryptographer Rick Merritt (02/14/2006 4:26 PM EST) URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180201688 SAN JOSE b A well known cryptographer has applied power analysis techniques to crack passwords for the most popular brand of RFID tags. Adi Shamir, professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute, reported his work in a high-profile panel discussion at the RSA Conference here. Separately, Ron Rivest, who co-developed the RSA algorithms with Shamir, used the stage of the annual panel to call for an industry effort to create a next-generation hashing algorithm to replace todaybs SHA-1. In recent weeks, Shamir used a directional antenna and digital oscilloscope to monitor power use by RFID tags while they were being read. Patterns in power use could be analyzed to determine when the tag received correct and incorrect password bits, he said. "The reflected signals contain a lot of information," Shamir said. "We can see the point where the chip is unhappy if a wrong bit is sent and consumes more power from the environmentb&to write a note to RAM that it has received a bad bit and to ignore the rest of the string," he added. "I havenbt tested all RFID tags, but we did test the biggest brand and it is totally unprotected," Shamir said. Using this approach, "a cellphone has all the ingredients you need to conduct an attack and compromise all the RFID tags in the vicinity," he added. Shamir said the pressure to get tags down to five cents each has forced designers to eliminate any security features, a shortcoming that needs to be addressed in next-generation products. Separately, cryptographers discussed the weaknesses in the fundamental SHA-1 hashing algorithm that were announced at the groupbs panel in 2005. "That was a real wake up call for cryptographers," said Rivest, who is also professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. [snip] Weblog at: http://weblog.warpspeed.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]