Brooders

Interesting, Pragmatic and real world look at the Texas Instruments RFID chip and its security. Available at RFIDAnalysis.org.

These chips are used for:

• Vehicle Immobilizers
• Electronic Payment

The site talks about practical concerns relating to actual exploits (it’s worth reading), as well as providing videos of the exploits and the equipments used to do it. The research paper draft is from January 2005, I am not sure of the actual dates of the research.

A quick excerpt about the type of attack:

The encryption algorithm used in the TI DST tags is an unpublished, proprietary cipher that uses a 40-bit key. The algorithm was designed in the early 1990′s by engineers at Texas Intruments, but is still being deploying in current systems. By today’s standards, a 40-bit key is unacceptably short: advances in computing power have made such keys succeptable to brute-force key guessing attacks. Therefore, the actual security of the DST system rests with the secrecy of the proprietary algorithm used in the tags.

This raises some concerns that if there is mass acceptance of a product, and the strength of security is not great, then there is potentially a lot of systems that may be vulnerable. Mind you this is probably similar to household keys ? I guess there are not millions of different keys for houses or desk drawers or filing cabinets.

I think the important point they make about the electronic payment is that the cryptographic security is one layer, they mention other systems in place to try and detect fraud.

Interesting thought ..

Build a robotic snake because “A snake can move into areas that are not possible for rescue workers“. I guess this is similar to RoboCarp and Augmented Dolphins. Get a robot (or augmented animal) to do things people can’t easily or is too dangerous.

I finished, All Tomorow’s Parties, the final installment in the Bridge Trilogy.

I’m not sure I’m that impressed. Idoru, the previous in the Trilogy, had more to it I think.

Don’t get me wrong, there were still some great elements:

• Laney, Quantitative Analyst doing information foraging and nodal things
• Nano Assemblers
• Futuristic drug references
• A technological singularity occurs
• In the present, existential contract killer

Quick Plot Summary:
Idoru goes missing, Rez goes touring again as tough love has left him alone. Laney ends up in a cardboard homeless shelter because he’s kinda hiding from the Lo Rez people. Yet he hires Rydell to check out “the Bridge” (see Virtual Light and Idoru) waiting for something nodal , he’s not sure what, to happen.

Comments:
For the time (around 1999?), this was pretty cool stuff to be projecting/predicting x years in the future. We don’t have our head mounted displays (I’m not sure why), but the ubiquitous access to information is pretty close to what we have now, although a little cooler in the book.

I also like the focus on the ordinary people getting caught up with things, and reacting to suvrive. There is also the sense of balance:

• Laney is in poor health as he goes on his quest for nodality and meaning,
• The existential killer is all alone in the world (and does that matter)
• Silencio, a mute child, has a great ability to find watches.

I still think it’s worth reading, especially if you’ve chalked up Virtual Light and Idoru. I think Gibson found nodality in our future with Nanotechnology and other social observations.

Rating: 6.5/10