i always get a kick out of companies using proprietary crypto in their products. hackaday reader b-rad writes,
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and RSA Laboratories have demonstrated how too crack the encryption of a Texas Instrument RFID transponder used in many “immobilizer-equipped” car keys and ExxonMobile SpeedPass e-payment fobs.
the team was able to reverse engineer the protocol and come up with a system for brute forcing the key recovery process in a matter of hours. they also created a proof-of-concept radio device that could be used to mimic a speedpass fob to purchase gasoline.
their cracking device utilizes 16 fpgas and is able to do in a couple hours what 10 general purpose pcs would do in 2 weeks, all for the price of about $3500. this reminds me of the bombes used by british cryptanalysts to crack enigma cyphers in world war 2. pretty cool stuff.
Ironically, i just decided to go to rfid.org, and this article was on their frong page:
http://www.aimglobal.org/members/news/templates/rfidinsights.asp?articleid=292&zoneid=24
Wasn’t this posted here a while ago? I know for a fact I saw this at least a month ago somewhere, just don’t know if it was here.
I have read a number of articles on fob applications but have yet to discover what the hell fob either means or stands for.
I don’t care about the details, just get me free gas.
btw. polish cracked the enigma…
These guy’s have actual videos on there site. If personal RFID security concerns you check out http://emvelope.com we are currently developing other products besides our personal wallet protector.