FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping

rfid should work the second they are powered. Which means simply passing them through a magnetic field to give them power and they regurgitate their info.

Which can be extended greatly with directional antennas. It would not be impossible with a high gain directional antenna to collect rfid information from inside a building from the outside. Once you have them it's just a matter of cracking the encryption. Might not even have to crack the encryption. Maybe able to get in by just rebroadcasting the collected info at just the right moment. Who knows what vulnerabilities such a new system has.

 

Give it some time, that'll change.

 

Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is "important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in."

So why would the FBI having my biometric info help me have a good job?

hmmm

 

From what I understand its not just a magnetic field(simple induction)so much as simple resonance.
hit the tag with the resonant freq, the chip is powered and opens and closes a switch in the antenna circuit with the stored digital data stream, the antenna is loosely coupled to the reader transmitter,so the reader detects the load of the tag going into and out of resonance. there is no actual transmitter in the tag,

 

Yeah, so it is simply requires an outside power source (simple field or narrow RF) and it spits it's info out. I bet I can build something that looks like a mailbox or something benign and all a person has to do is walk past it and bingo I have their info.

What is to keep that same data stream from simply being played back (rebroadcast) and accepted by anything looking to verify identy with that data ??? On the surface it looks like it's easier to steal that than someone's passcode that they punch in manualy.

 

How about if I send them a xerox of my bare ass instead?

 

Oh don't give the government any ideas. I can just see it now... they figure out that the sphicter wrinkles are unique like a finger print. Just another way to identify, a sphicterprint.

 

Nothing; in fact I think bulding/buying a reader/recorder and standinding in the line at the bank could become a lucrative hobby...
...thats the fallacy any signal can be recreated and re played, other than highly involved security protocols.Theres no reason somebody couldn't intererogate the personal chip in your arm collect the data; load a second chip like a stolen blank credit card or recreate the signal with bench equipment: Checkout the faq's :
http://www.rfidjournal.com/whitepapers/

 

Scary eh ? and these things are supposed to represent an improvement in security ??? I see this getting to the point where to fill in these big gaping holes they introduce a challenge-response authentication mechanism to rfid. The IC processing power required to do so will look like a horse pill buried under your skin.

 

I couldseea personal pin, but if you can interrogate the chip or capture the data stream from a valid id process you're back in the same boat.Its free space rf radiation. It will be hacked. I'm not worried about the technology so much as what it represents. Once 100% ID is possible it'll become mandatory, then peeve some gov official off and oops they transpose two digits and you become a non-citizen(i.e. anyone with the ability to access and update the database like dmv clerks attains God-like powers), But "everyone"(msm and politicos)will decry how we need it to make us "safer".

Don't like it don't like it at all.

 

good primer on inductive and backscatter techniques:
http://www.rfid-handbook.de/rfid/types_of_rfid.html#inductive

 

Yes, correct this is the very same problem that wirelesss AP's (accespoints) face. While nothing and I do mean nothing is ever 100 percent secure there are roadblocks you can throw up to secure wireless. Both sides of the RF transmission is of course encrypted and that encryption key can be rotated very frequently. (radius server) Even if you do crack the key you will only have the data stream till the next rotation which can be done on every TX if need be. This is currently how important but necessary wifi are secured. So far it has held up and has not been cracked (yet).

Of course doing so will increase the size of the "pill" further to accomodate proccessing power required.