March 20, 2008 Filed in:
News
Boing Boing was at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology
conference and shot an episode on how
easy it is to steal information from
your RFID embedded credit card. While these
cards are more prevalent in the US, they are
showing up here in Canada more often.
Mastercard now has a version that you can use at Tim
Hortons and Loblaws. These new credit cards have also
brought on more lax rules. If your purchase is below a
certain amount, they don't even require a signature any
more. I'm not too sure I'm comfortable with that.
With only an $8 device bought off eBay and a laptop
computer (nice to know that the Macbook Air's
stealthiness can come in handy for something), the
"futurist" was able to get all relevant info by passing
the reader near an unsuspecting mark's butt.
They did show one defence - a steel-lined wallet. Not
sure if that's a solution for everyone, but it's a good
start.
Tags: rfid, credit card, security, boing boing, oreilly