Author: Dave Lewis June 20, 2007 at 9:29 am · Filed under Email, Wireless
Today on “How Paranoid Are You?” watch contestants as they compete against each other to see how freaky paranoid they can get! Be sure to catch the schizo round where the prizes really rack up.
Sigh.
From the BBC:
French government officials have been ordered not to use handheld Blackberry devices amid fears that foreigners could spy on them, reports say.
Workers in the French president’s and prime minister’s office have been told their e-mails risk falling into foreign hands, Le Monde newspaper reports.
France’s SGDN security service is worried because Blackberries use US- and UK-based servers, the paper says.
But some officials are flouting the ban and using them in secret, it adds.
“They tried to offer us something else to replace our Blackberries but it doesn’t work,” one unnamed official told the paper.
Author: Dave Lewis May 27, 2007 at 12:47 pm · Filed under Wireless
Oops…
From Reuters:
Nissan North America has a warning for customers: placing your electronic key too close to your cellphone could leave you stranded.
The automaker is asking customers driving new models of two of its flagship sedans to keep their car keys and cellphones at least an inch apart to avoid disabling the “intelligent keys.”
Cellphones kept near Nissan’s I-Keys — wireless devices designed to allow drivers to enter and start their cars at the push of a button — can erase the electronic code on the keys, rendering them unable to unlock or start the cars.
The problem has occurred on the 2007 Nissan Altima and Infiniti G35 sedans — two of their top-selling models, the company said on Thursday.
“We discovered that if the I-Key touches a cellphone, outgoing or incoming calls have the potential to alter the electronic code inside the I-Key,” Nissan spokesman Kyle Bazemore said.
Author: Dave Lewis May 15, 2007 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Wireless
My old homestead, Bermuda, has jumped into the RFID pool.
Over the next five years, the program is expected to generate over $11 million in lost fees from unlicensed and uninsured vehicles, according to a press release. At the same time TCD expects to reduce the number of non-compliant vehicles on the island’s roadways to less than 1 percent, officials said.
The program kicks off this month.
Here’s how the whole system will work, from tag issuance to back-end data collection. A unique identification number will be established for each vehicle registered on the island; each number, or code, is then linked to a record in a centralized vehicle database.
Having lived on the island I was always amazed that a car could be stolen in such a small. The entire place is only 20 square miles (ish). Yet time and again it would happen. Scooters would vanish too but, those had a bad habit of ending up in the ocean up near the former Casemates prison in the Dockyard.
On Bermuda’s highways and byways throughout the country a network of fixed reader points will be established to verify vehicle registration and compliance.
Highways? Has the author been to Bermuda? I wonder how they will handle having four or five cars all appearing as the same registration? That would be something come to think of it. Send four cars with the same RFID tag to different parts of the island and enjoy the confused looks on the Bermudian govies.
Author: Dave Lewis May 14, 2007 at 12:45 pm · Filed under Wireless
For those of you (like me) who are starting to mess around with RFID cloning and such here is a handy little kit from the folks at Think Geek. After having seen Adam Laurie’s (aka Major Malfunction) presentation at Shmoocon this year I started reading up on RFID. I admittedly have not been keeping up on this. The RFID kit that they have for sale at $99 USD comes with:
Kit Contents
* Phidget USB RFID Reader
* USB Cable
* RFID Toys Book Covering RFID Projects and Downloadable Software
* 1 Blue Aquatic Key Chain
* 1 Credit Card Thin Card
* 1 Clamshell (thick) Card
* 1 Small Glass Ampoule
* 1 17mm Black Pill Tag
* 1 30mm Global Disc Tag
* 1 35mm White Disc with Hole
* 1 50mm Button with Sticker Backing
* 1 20mm Button with Sticker Backing
* 1 Inventory Label - Square Version
* 1 CD-ROM Tag
* 1 30mm Clear Thin Lamination Disc
* 1 25mm Clear Thin Lamination Disc
* 1 30mm Clear Thin Lamination Disc with Sticker Backing
* 1 25mm White Disc
* Note: Tags May Vary Slightly from the Assortment Listed
(Please be aware that all tags are pre-encoded with a unique hexadecimal code and are READ ONLY)
This is a nice tinker kit to get someone started. “You even get a cool bio-implantable type of RFID Tag which you should never ever load into a blowgun and implant in any of your coworkers because it’s not surgically sterilized.”
UPDATE: Well, I’m a little embarrassed to say that I neglected to point people to the RFID website. Adam Laurie’s site http://rfidiot.org is a great resource. (Thanks for the email Adam)
Author: Dave Lewis May 3, 2007 at 3:52 pm · Filed under Crime, Wireless
Here is another installment from the British TV show, The Real Hustle. This segment deals with bluetooth vulnerabilities though there are no real specifics tackled in this 3 minute piece. The part that I find interesting is that they say that you should not have bluetooth on at all. But, if bluetooth discovery is disabled on the mobile device that would go a long way to mitigating the problem. Although most folks wouldn’t know how to do this without help.
An interesting side note is that Adam Laurie, aka Major Malfunction, makes a cameo appearance.
This is interesting. Here is another one from NIST. NIST has finally released security guidelines for RFID security. This should make for an interesting read.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), released this week its guidelines describing the various risks to data security and personal privacy that RFID deployments may pose, while also providing best practices and procedures, based on existing technology and regulations, to mitigate those risks. The 154-page report, Guidelines for Securing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Systems, is meant to assist retailers, manufacturers, hospitals, federal agencies and other organizations in understanding how to deploy RFID technology securely and safely.
The paper focuses on RFID applications in the product supply chain, including tracking at the item level, says Tom Karygiannis, senior scientist at NIST and lead author of the paper. It does not address the use of RFID technology in smart-card applications for identification or payments, or applications that use near-field communications (NFC) technology.
Author: Dave Lewis April 25, 2007 at 7:51 am · Filed under Wireless
From the LA Times:
No one in the evening crowd at a Starbucks in Pasadena knew Humphrey Cheung.
But Cheung, quietly sipping hot chocolate and working on his laptop, knew things about them.
Several tables away was a guy sitting alone with his own laptop. “He’s starting a business,” Cheung said. And the young couple in the far corner? “They’re getting married,” he confided.
Cheung isn’t psychic. He had hacked into the coffee shop’s wireless Internet connection on his Toshiba laptop. It took him all of about five minutes to do so, using free software available online.
Public Wi-Fi is very handy for perusing the Internet away from the office or home. Just remember that you may have company while surfing.
Author: Dave Lewis April 25, 2007 at 7:48 am · Filed under Wireless
Well, I have not developed tusks or infrared vision…wait…nope, nothing. There is a question that keeps popping up about the effects of wireless on the human physiology. The Guardian drags this question out again for another round.
Fears over Wi-Fi networks run parallel to those over mobile phones and the masts they speak to. Sir William Stewart’s report in 2000 concluded there was no firm evidence to show mobile phone radiation was a health risk, but as a precaution recommended children use them sparingly, because their brains are still developing.
There are reasons to believe Wi-Fi networks are safer than mobile phones. Because they only have to transmit a few tens of metres, Wi-Fi networks run at much lower power. The Health Protection Agency says a person sitting within a Wi-Fi hot spot for a whole year receives the same dose of radiowaves as a person using a mobile phone for 20 minutes.
Since I have not gained the ability to walk through walls or become invisible I tend to laugh it off. But, in all seriousness what are the risks? Are they tangible? This is just one report that they make reference to and I wonder if there are others out there that I have not seen?
Author: Dave Lewis April 18, 2007 at 5:41 am · Filed under DR/BCP, Email, Wireless
UPDATE: Welcome to our readers from Money.AOL.com
Wow, this is something else. Blackberry users across the western hemisphere are rocking back and forth gently this morning. They have been suddenly weened from their addiction.
Customers on the BlackBerry Forums discussion board complained of having no service, while callers to the BlackBerry US technical support line were still greeted with the following message early Wednesday morning in the US: “We are currently experiencing a service interruption that is causing delays in sending or receiving messages. We apologise for the inconvenience and will provide updates as soon as they become available.”
New York television news channel NewsChannel4 reported on Tuesday night that the problem affected “all users in the Western hemisphere.”
I will be very interested as to how this will affect the stock for RIM who faces a very real challenge from Apple’s upcoming iPhone.
Myrcurial should be losing it right about now. Please try to keep your fingers away from the BB users in withdrawal. They may bite.
