Often people do not realize that virtually everything somehow relies on a computer chip. What people also do not realize is the security issues involved when a computer chip is used to control a device, particularly one that deals with sensitive data. When a computer chip becomes integrated into a credit card, security issues become paramount.
An experiment done by The Univerisity of Massachussets proved such vulnerabilities. Even though the protocols and commands used by Radio frequency identification chips, or RFID, could not be found publicly, the team of researchers were able to reverse engineer both the readers and the credit cards themselves. They stated that "The experiments indicate that all the cards are susceptible to live relay attacks, all the cards are susceptible to disclosure of personal information, and many of the cards are susceptible to various types of replay attacks. In addition, we successfully completed a cross-contamination attack against the magstripe of one card. All but one of the other cards tested appear to be susceptible to the cross-contamination attack as well." Unfortunately, people are led into a false sense of security when they used credit cards with an embedded RFID chip. If people knew of these vulnerabilities, would they be so willing to use these credit cards? If they also knew that these cards could also be read from a distance of 33 feet away with the proper equipment, would they be so quick to accept them? I know I wouldn't.
For more information, visit the University of Massachussets study here.
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