Futuretech Part I: RFID Tags

Although the use of RFID tags in identification documents, such as the new United States passport (left) may provide a higher degree of security for the bearer of the document, some critics argue that the technology can be manipulated in a variety of ways that may threaten travelers. Some of these possibilities were particularly disturbing, especially the example of passport RFID tags functioning as bomb detonators (refer to 2.4 Information Disclosure.)

On the surface, this seems more like the stuff of a Hollywood thriller (refer to the opening scene in the 1999 James Bond film The World is not Enough in which an RFID-style transmitter in a lapel pin is used to detonate a bomb) than anything that would be likely to occur. An intelligence or security professional might assess this possibility differently, but acts of terrorism such as the one envisioned in this example are executed almost daily using far less sophisticated means, such as the improvised explosive devices (newspeak for bombs) currently being used again American troops in Iraq that are remotely detonated using cellular phones. In any case, there would have to be some kind of incentive to exploit RFID technology in this way, which, again, is difficult to imagine what that might be.

Based on the research I conducted for this assignment, the jury is still out as to whether the infrastructure underlying the widespread implementation of RFID technology is secure. It will be rolled out in such a way that makes use of existing technologies, such as the Internet and PC computing, neither of which were originally designed with security in mind.

However, this example led me to conclude that the technology is probably more secure than the researchers in question would have us believe. This article implies it was a relatively simple task to compromise the pay-at-the-pump RFID technology, and it assumes a common thief will be motivated to acquire the technical acumen required to commit such a crime. The same thing can be done now by means of identity theft, which requires no advanced knowledge of mathematical theory and electronics. The researchers, on the other hand, had these advantages when they set out to expose vulnerabilities in this technology.