Page 194 - DCAP309_INFORMATION_SECURITY_AND_PRIVACY

Information Security and Privacy

Notes Commercialized chips became widely available in the ’80s, and RFID tags were being used to
track difficult-to-manage property like farm animals and railroad cars. But over the last few
years, the market for RFIDs has exploded, driven by advances in computer databases and declining
chip prices. Now dozens of companies, from Motorola to Philips to Texas Instruments,
manufacture the chips.
The tags work by broadcasting a few bits of information to specialized electronic readers. Most
commercial RFID chips are passive emitters, which mean they have no on-board battery. They
send a signal only when a reader powers them with a squirt of electrons.
Once juiced, these chips broadcast their signal indiscriminately within a certain range, usually a
few inches to a few feet. Active emitter chips with internal power can send signals hundreds of
feet; these are used in the automatic toll-paying devices (with names like FasTrak and E-ZPass)
that sit on car dashboards, pinging tollgates as autos whiz through.
For protection, RFID signals can be encrypted.

Example: The chips that will go into US passports will likely be coded to make it difficult
for unauthorized readers to retrieve their on-board information (which will include a person’s
name, age, nationality, and photo).
But most commercial RFID tags don’t include security, which is expensive: A typical passive
RFID chip costs about a quarter, whereas one with encryption capabilities runs about $5. It’s just
not cost-effective for your average office building to invest in secure chips.
This leaves most RFIDs vulnerable to cloning or – if the chip has a writable memory area, as
many do – data tampering.

Example: Chips that track product shipments or expensive equipment, for example,
often contain pricing and item information. These writable areas can be locked, but often they
aren’t, because the companies using RFIDs don’t know how the chips work or because the data
fields need to be updated frequently. Either way, these chips are open to hacking.

Did u know? Full form of RFID
Radio Frequency Identification

Task Illustrate the functioning of RFID chips.

13.1.1 Privacy Aspects

Impending risks to privacy are usually significant issues for individuals and organizations.
Main traits and functionalities of RFID technologies have the potential to provide advantages
(such as convenience, expediting processes) in addition to foster misperceptions and to impact
privacy. RFID systems that gather data associated to identifiable individuals raise particular
privacy issues that should be regarded as a priority challenge to the acceptance of the technology
in a huge number of regions. In many cases, the potential attack of privacy via the use of RFID
is based on both the technology accessed and the context. Invisibility of the data compilation
may be the primary trait of RFID that raises concerns. It is also a risk multiplier for the possible
privacy challenges connected with the use of the technology. RFID might disclose to third

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