RFID credit cards cracked (yet again ...)

["Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah" <rMslade () shaw ca>]

"I want to inform people about the vulnerabilities of these cards"

A University of Virginia graduate student and two fellow hackers say they have 
cracked the encryption code that protects billions of credit cards and security 
badges. With readily available equipment that cost less than $1,000, the student 
and his two Germany-based partners dismantled a chip that is found inside many 
“smartcards” and mapped out its security algorithm. The hackers were then able 
to run it through a brute force computer program that broke the encryption after 
a few hours. If they were to try again, he said, it would take a matter of minutes. 
“I don’t want to help attackers, but I want to inform people about the 
vulnerabilities of these cards,” said the Ph.D. candidate in computer engineering at 
UVa who is originally from Germany. The findings were announced at the Chaos 
Communications Congress in Berlin. They are not releasing the details of how 
they beat the chip’s security code.  

http://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CDP/MGArticle/CDP_Ba
sicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173354778618  

======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade () vcn bc ca     slade () victoria tc ca     rslade () computercrime org
Funny. I've never heard `Project Gutenberg' called `Yahoo' before
    - http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051004&mode=classic
http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm

_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.