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[Brenda]

Found on Slashdot today:

Some students in Amsterdam are publishing research on viral threats to the infamous chips:
http://www.rfidvirus.org/index.html

The same people also have a page describing a nice little prototype defensive device: http://www.rfidguardian.org/index.html.

The RFID Guardian is a mobile battery-powered device that offers personal RFID security and privacy management for people. The RFID Guardian monitors and regulates RFID usage, on the behalf of consumers.

The RFID Guardian is meant for personal use; it manages the RFID tags within physical proximity of a person (as opposed to managing RFID tags owned by the person, that are left at home). The RFID Guardian is  portable. It should be PDA-sized, or better yet, could be integrated into a handheld computer or cellphone. The RFID Guardian is also  battery powered. The RFID Guardian also performs  2-way RFID communications. It acts like an RFID reader, querying tags and decoding the tag responses, and it can also emulate an RFID tag, allowing it to perform direct in-band communications with other RFID readers.

[Lightning]

Fascinating.  Why does Scotty come to mind?  "I canna hold 'er together much longer, Cap'n!  She's gonna blow!"   

Up until now, everyone working on RFID technology has tacitly assumed that the mere act of scanning an RFID tag cannot modify back-end software, and certainly not in a malicious way. Unfortunately, they are wrong. In our research, we have discovered that if certain vulnerabilities exist in the RFID software, an RFID tag can be (intentionally) infected with a virus and this virus can infect the backend database used by the RFID software. From there it can be easily spread to other RFID tags. No one thought this possible until now.

Useful for both good guys and bad ones, as so often with technology.

Good luck to these folks in trying to convince the PTB to abandon their RFID control-freak plans, though.

[merlin419]

The mere threat that it could cause a virus launched into the backdoor of the controllers programs brings a smile to my face.