 | Monday, January 31, 2005
Issue 68 | | Will Smith, Editor |  |
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RFID Hackers Shock Popular Press
The mainstream media has pounced on a story about the success a Johns Hopkins University research team has had in cracking the popular RFID security system used in car keys to fight automobile theft. Referred to as "immobilizer," the technology allows only a specially-encoded key to start its owner's vehicle. A passive RFID tag is housed in the key, which responds to interrogations from an RFID reader within the car. If the tag doesn't produce the correct response, the car won't start.
Both immobilizer and ExxonMobil's Speedpass, which the group also claims to have cracked, use chips from Texas Instruments. Roughly 150 million Toyota, Nissan, and Ford keys are equipped with the technology, which has proved very successful both commercially and as a theft deterrent.
Despite its coverage, the import of this story is dubious. In the first place, as any hacker or security consultant will tell you, no security system is full-proof; that the immobilizer is not absolutely unbreakable comes as no surprise. Second, it is not the system's fundamental structure that is flawed. Rather, the strength of encryption that it uses is weak. This means that a relatively simple fix could remedy the system for future versions. A look at the details of the hack reveals that it's rather involved and impractical anyway, requiring specialized equipment and very close proximity to the original key. It would be overblown to suggest that all immobilizer users are now vulnerable to car theft from petty thieves; only the most committed, persistent thieves with a particular target in mind might benefit.
The relevance of this story to the RFID industry is obvious, reminding us that if university researchers are spending time trying to discover RFID's vulnerabilities, so too are less scrupulous factions. It is also important from a PR perspective. The rate of widespread RFID adoption will be directly correlated to the public's comfort with it as a secure technology. Like the privacy issue, security needs to addressed by the industry not only for its own merits but also to assuage consumer concern.
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RFID Tracking at Juvenile Court to Save $30K Annually
The average time spent weekly searching for files in Georgia's DeKalb County Juvenile Court is estimated at 10 hours. It is this enormously inefficient and expensive process that the Court hopes to avoid by installing an RFID system to tag, track, and better organize its 12,000-file mess. The system carries with it a cost of $50,000, an intimidating sum at first blush. But when considered alongside the $30,000 in annual savings the system is projected to generate, the return-on-investment comes within a very impressive twenty-four months.
Most of the system's hardware and software will come from 3M, while Texas Instruments will supply the passive RFID transponders used to tag the files. Key features include file check-in and check-out, PC-based file searching, and integration with the Court's existing case-management software.
While supply chain management (SCM) receives the lion's share of attention regarding RFID applications, the implementations of systems like the DeKalb County Juvenile Court's are quietly gaining traction. Why? For the same reason that SCM systems have thus far been slower to materialize: ROI. Even at $0.80 per tag, the Court's RFID deployment will pay for itself very quickly. As we all know, the same unfortunately cannot yet be said for many SCM deployments.
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VeriSign Plans RFID Security Enhancements
VeriSign will probably announce enhancements to its RFID technology at the EPC Developer's Conference to be held in Chicago this April, according to Paul Strzelec, director of marketing for VeriSign Directory Services. "EPC DevCon 2005" represents a push by VeriSign to solicit interest in the company's Object Naming Services (ONS) and related RFID technology, so its choice as the venue for the announcement of technology improvements is natural. (In January of last year, VeriSign won the rights to maintain the root directory services for the ONS, an integral component of the anticipated "Internet of Things.")
VeriSign's pronounced focus on RFID security is timely indeed. Just this week, a big story broke (see above) that Johns Hopkins University researchers had cracked an RFID car theft prevention system, heightening awareness and concern over RFID's potential vulnerabilities.
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"Smart Box" RFID Shipping Tech Yields Significant Savings
Consulting giant A.T. Kearney was commissioned by RFID solutions supplier Savi Technology to produce a report examining the potential economic benefits of "smart box" technology, the RFID-based system used to speed the passage of shipments coming from overseas through U.S. Customs. According to the report, such systems cannot only provide homeland security benefits, which is the foremost goal, they can also afford importers and exporters significant cost savings when combined with a tracking network. Said A.T. Kearney's Omar Hijazi, "Based on a number of potential benefits, we calculated that users could realize net benefits averaging $1,200 per container shipment." Benefits include the usual suspects, such as decreased shrinkage and out-of-stocks.
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WhereNet Deploys RFID Asset Tracking for Army Depot
The Tobyhanna army depot has chosen to automate the tracking and inventorying of its radar systems using Real-Time Locating System from WhereNet, a Santa Clara, California-based supply chain management solutions provider. WhereNet's system makes use of a powerful active RFID technology whose battery-powered tags can transmit up to 1,000 feet. It represents a classic case of total supply chain visibility, in which every tagged item's location will be attainable in real time, without the need for human intervention.
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Your mission, as a company, is to attract, hire, and retain top talent. Your mission, as a candidate, is to make the right career move. You need the right RFID recruiting professional to make the entire recruitment process more effective, efficient, manageable and rewarding. Click here for RFID recruiting! | | | Upcoming RFID Events | RFID World Asia 2005, 27 - 29 April, Suntec Singapore
Terrapinn's 2nd annual RFID World Asia 2005, taking place 27-29 April in Singapore, is established as THE event in the region to feature case studies from leading end users who are implementing RFID. If you want to know how RFID will impact your bottom line, Register Now! | | | RFID Research and Knowledge | Have RFID questions? Ask the RFID Talk experts.
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Hutu, Inc., a leading provider of "Pilot to Enterprise" RFID solutions, will unveil RFID Advance, a workflow application foundation that enables organizations to rapidly deploy RFID applications within existing environments, at RFID World in March. The patent pending architecture maximizes application flexibility while lowering the long-term cost of ownership. Learn more here! |
About RFID Update - Launched in early 2004 to provide timely analysis of RFID industry news, RFID Update publishes editorial briefings every Monday and Thursday for the growing ranks of top level executives involved in the deployment of RFID projects. Each issue distills the impact of global RFID developments by providing an analytical summary of the news and issues most pertinent to successful RFID implementations.
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