https://urgentcomm.com/wp-content/themes/ucm_child/assets/images/logo/footer-new-logo.png
  • Home
  • News
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
    • Galleries
    • IWCE’s Video Showcase
    • IWCE 2022 Winter Showcase
    • IWCE 2023 Pre-event Guide
  • Commentary
    • Back
    • Commentary
    • Urgent Matters
    • View From The Top
    • All Things IWCE
    • Legal Matters
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Resources
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Reprints & Reuse
  • IWCE
    • Back
    • IWCE
    • Conference
    • Special Events
    • Exhibitor Listings
    • Premier Partners
    • Floor Plan
    • Exhibiting Information
    • Register for IWCE
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Terms of Service
    • Privacy Statement
    • Cookie Policy
  • Related Sites
    • Back
    • American City & County
    • IWCE
    • Light Reading
    • IOT World Today
    • Mission Critical Technologies
    • TU-Auto
  • In the field
    • Back
    • In the field
    • Broadband Push-to-X
    • Internet of Things
    • Project 25
    • Public-Safety Broadband/FirstNet
    • Virtual/Augmented Reality
    • Land Mobile Radio
    • Long Term Evolution (LTE)
    • Applications
    • Drones/Robots
    • IoT/Smart X
    • Software
    • Subscriber Devices
    • Video
  • Call Center/Command
    • Back
    • Call Center/Command
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • NG911
    • Alerting Systems
    • Analytics
    • Dispatch/Call-taking
    • Incident Command/Situational Awareness
    • Tracking, Monitoring & Control
  • Network Tech
    • Back
    • Network Tech
    • Interoperability
    • LMR 100
    • LMR 200
    • Backhaul
    • Deployables
    • Power
    • Tower & Site
    • Wireless Networks
    • Coverage/Interference
    • Security
    • System Design
    • System Installation
    • System Operation
    • Test & Measurement
  • Operations
    • Back
    • Operations
    • Critical Infrastructure
    • Enterprise
    • Federal Government/Military
    • Public Safety
    • State & Local Government
    • Training
  • Regulations
    • Back
    • Regulations
    • Narrowbanding
    • T-Band
    • Rebanding
    • TV White Spaces
    • None
    • Funding
    • Policy
    • Regional Coordination
    • Standards
  • Organizations
    • Back
    • Organizations
    • AASHTO
    • APCO
    • DHS
    • DMR Association
    • ETA
    • EWA
    • FCC
    • IWCE
    • NASEMSO
    • NATE
    • NXDN Forum
    • NENA
    • NIST/PSCR
    • NPSTC
    • NTIA/FirstNet
    • P25 TIG
    • TETRA + CCA
    • UTC
Urgent Communications
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • News
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Video
    • Podcasts
    • Omdia Crit Comms Circle Podcast
    • Galleries
    • IWCE’s Video Showcase
    • IWCE 2023 Pre-event Guide
    • IWCE 2022 Winter Showcase
  • Commentary
    • Back
    • All Things IWCE
    • Urgent Matters
    • View From The Top
    • Legal Matters
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Reprints & Reuse
    • UC eZines
    • Sponsored content
  • IWCE
    • Back
    • Conference
    • Why Attend
    • Exhibitor Listing
    • Floor Plan
    • Exhibiting Information
    • Join the Event Mailing List
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Cookie Policy
    • Terms of Service
    • Privacy Statement
  • Related Sites
    • Back
    • American City & County
    • IWCE
    • Light Reading
    • IOT World Today
    • TU-Auto
  • newsletter
  • In the field
    • Back
    • Internet of Things
    • Broadband Push-to-X
    • Project 25
    • Public-Safety Broadband/FirstNet
    • Virtual/Augmented Reality
    • Land Mobile Radio
    • Long Term Evolution (LTE)
    • Applications
    • Drones/Robots
    • IoT/Smart X
    • Software
    • Subscriber Devices
    • Video
  • Call Center/Command
    • Back
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • NG911
    • Alerting Systems
    • Analytics
    • Dispatch/Call-taking
    • Incident Command/Situational Awareness
    • Tracking, Monitoring & Control
  • Network Tech
    • Back
    • Cybersecurity
    • Interoperability
    • LMR 100
    • LMR 200
    • Backhaul
    • Deployables
    • Power
    • Tower & Site
    • Wireless Networks
    • Coverage/Interference
    • Security
    • System Design
    • System Installation
    • System Operation
    • Test & Measurement
  • Operations
    • Back
    • Critical Infrastructure
    • Enterprise
    • Federal Government/Military
    • Public Safety
    • State & Local Government
    • Training
  • Regulations
    • Back
    • Narrowbanding
    • T-Band
    • Rebanding
    • TV White Spaces
    • None
    • Funding
    • Policy
    • Regional Coordination
    • Standards
  • Organizations
    • Back
    • AASHTO
    • APCO
    • DHS
    • DMR Association
    • ETA
    • EWA
    • FCC
    • IWCE
    • NASEMSO
    • NATE
    • NXDN Forum
    • NENA
    • NIST/PSCR
    • NPSTC
    • NTIA/FirstNet
    • P25 TIG
    • TETRA + CCA
    • UTC
acc.com

Call Center/Command


Same threats, different technology

Same threats, different technology

Potential threats to radio frequency identification, or RFID, systems resemble the problems currently being encountered by IT network administrators,
  • Written by Urgent Communications Administrator
  • 1st September 2006

Potential threats to radio frequency identification, or RFID, systems resemble the problems currently being encountered by IT network administrators, according to experts who presented at network security conferences held last month in Las Vegas.

“RFID has been called the Internet of things,” said Melanie Reiback, a researcher at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. “The Internet of things has the same problems as the Internet of today. It’s susceptible to the same types of attacks.”

However, some independent analysts monitoring RFID security believe that such threats are overstated. “All security systems have their vulnerabilities. I don’t think this is anything specific to RFID,” said Sara Shah from ABI Research. “I didn’t find it be as earth-shattering as was portrayed in the media a few months ago.”

Threats and abuses of RFID technology include unauthorized tag reading, eavesdropping on transmitted data, tag duplication or “cloning,” denial-of-service attacks and the ability to insert viruses and other harmful software — or malware — into enterprise networks.

“RFID technology extends your network perimeter,” Reiback said. “People need to understand that.”

Reiback presented a research paper at an IEEE conference held last spring that outlined the potential for viruses to be embedded in RFID tags. She and her research team built a modular test setup that simulated a typical supply-chain application using an RFID reader and tags, middleware and four different databases.

A simple first-generation passive RFID tag can hold up to 128 characters of information, with newer tags able to store up to 256 characters. That capacity might not sound like much, but it’s enough to let a creative programmer store non-standard characters designed to generate system faults when processed and then follow that with concise programming commands in languages such as SQL or XML.

Reiback tested a method to use corrupted tags on an improperly secured system to inject commands into a back-end SQL database — including the ability to query a database for a piece of information and then write it back to the tag.

“Admittedly, this requires a little bit of insider knowledge,” she said. “But you can write out data to the tag, and you don’t even have to be there.” Her favorite discovery is the ability to conduct a denial-of-service attack by using a corrupted tag to issue a shutdown command to the database. “It’s not fatal; but if it goes from reader to reader, it can be a mess.”

While her paper caused quite a stir, some are less impressed with Reiback’s work, feeling it lacks real-world practicality. “You’re working with [RFID chip] storage, and she’s correct there, but it’s nothing new,” said Lukas Grunwald, a computer security specialist with more than 20 years of experience. “We did it two years ago with RFDump [software]. She built a vulnerable system, not demonstrated how this could be done on a real [production] system.”

He said Reiback’s test didn’t incorporate any standardized security practices or state-of-the-art database security solutions that would be more representative of a real-world system.

Grunwald practices what he preaches, sometimes with disastrous results. He created an RFID tag that crashed the access control system at his office, leaving all the doors unlocked without triggering any alarms. Then neither he nor the service company that installed the system could revive it. His malicious tag had inadvertently erased the underlying microprocessor control software.

At the BlackHat USA 2006 security conference in Las Vegas, Grunwald quickly demonstrated how easy it is to read the information contained on his German passport’s embedded RFID chip using a laptop, then modifying it and writing it out to another chip, a process that took less than 2 minutes. While it took two weeks of research time — “billable at $15,000” — to figure out the process, the open source software can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet. A blank chip costs $20 in small quantities, and a USB-compatible RFID-tag writer costs less than $200.

International standards for incorporating RFID technology into passports have been established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (IACO). According to ABI Research’s Shah, the IACO standards are basic, but the threat of a duplicated e-passport is not significant.

“Let’s say you clone my passport,” Shah said. “You take all of my information in my chip. All that’s going to have is my information on the front page of my passport, my pictures, some biometrics. What are you going to do with that? When you go to an airport, you’re not me, it’s not your picture and you don’t have the same fingerprints that I do.”

Furthermore, both Shah and Grunwald agreed that should the information in a cloned passport be changed, the new information wouldn’t match the unique digital “hash” signature generated when the original information is written out. That would raise a red flag to border control agents inspecting the e-passport.

The smart chip on an e-passport can store up to 72 kilobytes of information, offering ample capacity for storing non-standard information, such as malicious code. One possibility Grunwald suggested concerned enabling an e-passport to also work with an RFID access control system, which could allow someone to enter a secured area without the proper authorization.

Both Grunwald and Reiback are working on new tools to protect RFID technology. Grunwald is developing a laptop-based simulation capable of emulating either an RFID tag or reader. It would be used to test back-end databases and middleware, allowing someone to cycle through many different types of bad tags to see what would happen.

At DEFCON, the annual informal hacker’s conference that followed BlackHat, Reiback introduced a mobile hardware device designed for “personal RFID privacy management.” It is a two-way RFID communicator with a broadcast range of about 1 meter.

Wardrivers blast off

Discovering open Wi-Fi hotspots has been a hobby of the hacker community for years. Members use car-mounted laptop computers for “wardriving” around neighborhoods to scan for open access points. Intrepid souls quickly moved their setups to bikes, boats, planes and helicopters as they sought new ways to rapidly cover territory.

Amateur rocketeer Rick Hill has managed to trump all other wardrivers to date. Hill, a senior scientist at a computer security firm, combined his hobby with his day job by installing an 802.11b Wi-Fi scanning payload into a rocket.

“I first got the idea through trying to set up my own wireless Internet service provider business,” Hill said. “There are lots of trees and a forest canopy where I live.” A rocket provides a virtual tower in the sky above trees and terrain clutter to look for Wi-Fi emissions.

His first setup used a one-third-scale model of a 1950’s-era NASA sounding rocket capable of reaching a height exceeding one mile. With a thrust of 95 pounds and a cost of $200 per solid motor, the rocket is a far cry from the small backyard-style hobby models with which most people are familiar. It is so powerful that launching one requires FAA clearance and a remote launch site so it doesn’t inadvertently hit an airplane on the way up.

The Wi-Fi scanning payload weighs less than 3 pounds and includes an HP iPAQ PDA, a stripped-down Deliberant 2300 access point, a cluster of 9 V batteries to power the access point and a circularly polarized antenna designed to fit in the 12×5.5-inch payload bay. The PDA automatically records Wi-Fi data and broadcasts in real-time from the access point to a ground station for redundancy.

Hill noted that payloads encounter forces up to 10 times that of gravity during launch, and amateur rocketry can be fraught with mishaps. “If it can fail on a rocket, it will,” he said.

But once the rocket is launched and reaches its peak altitude, a pair of explosive charges fire to separate the nose cone and deploy the parachute. Total flight time is about 6 minutes, with about 5 minutes of useful scanning time from parachute deployment until the rocket descends to under 500 feet.

Hill has conducted a total of three launches in rural areas of Maryland and Virginia, two with the Nike Smoke rocket and one with a smaller rocket that rises to 2000 feet and doesn’t require FAA launch approval. Two of the launches successfully picked up wireless access points in a 50-square-mile area around the launch site that weren’t detectable by ground-based wardriving gear. The third launch, conducted near the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, rose to about 200 feet, then nosed over and flew parallel to the ground for about 1 mile before landing. It picked up seven Wi-Fi access points, but Hill had hoped to map the UVA campus and surrounding area if his flight had gone straight up, as planned.
— Doug Mohney

Tags: Call Center/Command content Wireless Networks

Most Recent


  • Ransomware, data breaches inundate OT & industrial sector
    Three-quarters of industrial firms suffered a ransomware attack in the past year, with far more compromises affecting operational technology (OT) than ever before — representing a surge in attacks driven by both the industrial sector’s vulnerability and propensity to pay ransoms in order to remain operational. In the past 12 months, more than half of […]
  • How and why AT&T selected Fujitsu radios for 5G
    Lost in AT&T’s big $14 billion announcement with Ericsson for open RAN was the fact that it also plans to purchase 5G radios from Fujitsu. The move represents a major win for the Japanese wireless network equipment vendor, which is relatively unknown outside its home market. “In order to support the acceleration of open RAN in AT&T’s […]
  • PSSA asks FCC for FirstNet Authority license at 4.9 GHz, opposes CERCI proposal
    A Public Safety Spectrum Alliance (PSSA) filing this week reiterates its call for the FCC to award a nationwide license of 4.9 GHz  spectrum to the FirstNet Authority, ignoring a recent coalition filing that asks the commission to approve rules that would let local jurisdictions largely determine how the airwaves are used. Jeff Johnson, executive […]
  • Critical Bluetooth flaw exposes Android, Apple & Linux devices to takeover
    Attackers can exploit a critical Bluetooth security vulnerability that’s been lurking largely unnoticed for years on macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux device platforms. The keystroke injection vulnerability allows an attacker to control the targeted device as if they were attached by a Bluetooth keyboard, performing various functions remotely depending on the endpoint. Tracked as CVE-2023-45866, the flaw exists […]

Leave a comment Cancel reply

To leave a comment login with your Urgent Comms account:

Log in with your Urgent Comms account

Or alternatively provide your name, email address below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • Nokia, Motorola Solutions announce utility-centric agreements with Anterix
  • Same threats, different technology
    Newscan: Video decision cited as one reason for Portland crowd-control unit’s mass resignation
  • Are ransomware attacks the new pandemic?
  • Robot-bus trial succeeds ... mostly

Commentary


Things to know about IWCE 2024: The basics 

5th December 2023

Land mobile radio (LMR) systems are just as vulnerable to cyberattacks as any other networks used in the public-safety sector. Here’s what to do about it.

  • 2
7th November 2023

September 3GPP Plenary meetings feature Release 18 progress, Release 19 beginnings

13th October 2023
view all

Events


UC Ezines


IWCE 2019 Wrap Up

13th May 2019
view all

Twitter


Newsletter

Sign up for UrgentComm’s newsletters to receive regular news and information updates about Communications and Technology.

Expert Commentary

Learn from experts about the latest technology in automation, machine-learning, big data and cybersecurity.

Business Media

Find the latest videos and media from the market leaders.

Media Kit and Advertising

Want to reach our digital and print audiences? Learn more here.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • American City & County
  • IWCE
  • Light Reading
  • IOT World Today
  • Mission Critical Technologies
  • TU-Auto

WORKING WITH US

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Events
  • Careers

FOLLOW Urgent Comms ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2023 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.