October 26, 2006
Video Demonstration Of Contactless Credit Card Flaws
Payments News has an embedded YouTube video demonstrating the privacy holes in contactless credit cards. The video is by the same researchers that found that they could read credit card numbers and expiration dates off of the RFID tags on 20 contactless credit cards directly through their mailer envelopes. Their research was covered in the New York Times a few days ago. Note that it's rather difficult to tell what's going on in the video.
Earlier this year, other security researchers in Europe and elsewhere found that they could also skim information from an RFID tag in an e-passport and use them to trigger an explosive. The US and several countries in Europe started issuing ICAO-compliant e-passports in August. Both the credit cards and the passports have spawned a mini-industry in protective sleeves and wallets, which work on the principle of a Faraday Cage that blocks RF signals.
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