Interesting People mailing list archives
Keys and keys
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 14:55:53 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: John Schwartz <jswatz () nytimes com> Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 14:28:39 -0500 To: <dave () farber net> Subject: Keys and keys Hi, Dave -- I thought IP readers might be interested in this one: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/national/29key.html Graduate Cryptographers Unlock Code of 'Thiefproof' Car Key Published: January 29, 2005 BALTIMORE - Matthew Green starts his 2005 Ford Escape with a duplicate key he had made at Lowe's. Nothing unusual about that, except that the automobile industry has spent millions of dollars to keep him from being able to do it. Mr. Green, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, is part of a team that plans to announce on Jan. 29 that it has cracked the security behind "immobilizer" systems from Texas Instruments Inc. The systems reduce car theft, because vehicles will not start unless the system recognizes a tiny chip in the authorized key. They are used in millions of Fords, Toyotas and Nissans. All that would be required to steal a car, the researchers said, is a moment next to the car owner to extract data from the key, less than an hour of computing, and a few minutes to break in, feed the key code to the car and hot-wire it. An executive with the Texas Instruments division that makes the systems did not dispute that the Hopkins team had cracked its code, but said there was much more to stealing a car than that. The devices, said the executive, Tony Sabetti, "have been fraud-free and are likely to remain fraud-free." The implications of the Hopkins finding go beyond stealing cars. Variations on the technology used in the chips, known as RFID for radio frequency identification, are widely used.... ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- Keys and keys David Farber (Jan 29)