Ways to Blow up Identity Card's RFID Chips

In October, the U.S. State Department began issuing biometric "ePassports" that contain a radio frequency identification tag under the back cover. The tiny chip holds the usual passport data, including a digital photo. The motive behind adding the chips is ostensibly good: to combat counterfeiting and illegal immigration. However the good intention of big brother omnipresence backlash faster than a crack whip. A German hacker quickly found a way to crack the encryption. With a laptop and a chip reader he bought for $200, he was able to steal data from an encrypted RFID tag, potentially allowing him to clone an ePassport. And it's not just Americans who are at risk. Twenty-seven countries (mostly in Europe) that participate in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program are required by U.S. law to issue the new electronic passports to their citizens. The Dutch and British media have already reported major security flaws in the new IDs. Despites an obvious flaw in the chip encryption scheme, the US State Department will push the RFID passport program mandating all passport with always -on radio frequency identification chips by January 1. This will making it easy for officials and hackers alike to grab your personal stats.

So what's a security-conscious citizen like me will do? Though it is inevitable that Uncle Sam want to track everyone like cattle's, however there are still ways to make this method a bit more inconvenient for them. So I went around and do some research for devising a best plan to disable the RFID chips without burning up your passport all together. But be careful - tampering with a passport is punishable by 25 years in prison in the US. Not to mention the "special " custom search, with rubber gloves. If you're getting paranoid about strangers slurping up you identity ? Here 's what you can do about it.

Water Treatment

1 "Accidentally" leaving your passport in the jeans you just put in the washer won't work. You're more likely to ruin you passport than the chip. Plus in the near future there will plenty more of RFID water resistance type.

Nuking

2 Forget about nuking it in the microwave, long term exposure to the nuking session could cause the chips burst into flames, leaving scorch marks. Besides ruining you passport with permanent nasty burnt smell.

Hammer Time
3 The best approach? Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a blunt, hard object should disable it. A nonworking RFID doesn't invalidate the passport. So you can still use it.

Best Solution

Hammer Time + 10 second Nuking Session, this will ensure that you've properly destroyed the actual storage unit within the chip itself. A brief microwave session also help electrocuting the power supply circuit. So what will you have left at the end, is a non working RFID passport with all your paper trail information intact. Besides this will give some work for your local custom agent to do typing the information and do their job.

OpenBeacon - Open source RFID

Today I ran into some nifty news in the RFID business front, apparently in the realm of cutting edge tracking logistics 2.0. Open source still manage finding its way advancing collaboration of creativity among the tech community. Though this platform might not yet be ready for the enterprise prime time, however it's worth a good look.
OpenBeacon is an open source wireless tracking system for following people around buildings got its first public use last week at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. The creators of the Open Beacon system sold the RFID tags at US$13 each to attendees who volunteered to be tracked during the four-day event. Also Open Beacon worked with partners to create a three dimensional model of the conference center and anyone could use touch-screen monitors that displayed the location of attendees on the model. Touching an attendee on the screen displayed a profile that the person could voluntarily add.

This Initiative is a free design for an active RFID device which operates in the 2.4GHz ISM band. Open Beacon uses chips from Nordic Semiconductor ASA that transmit and receive over the 2.4GHz frequency, which is available for unlicensed use in many countries. The device contains a unique serial number, but may have other information. OpenBeacon is designed as a transceiver device and therefore both transmits and receives radio waves. The intention of this project is to offer a wide range of use cases such as visitor or item tracking and wireless remote control with a free self-contained and low-cost RFID design.

One of the greatest strength in OpenBeacon tag comparing to other Wi-Fi based active RFID tracking system is longer battery life by transmit and then sleep, cutting back on power consumption. The devices could run for several months before requiring a new battery. Plus both hardware and software are open source which make this alternative considerably attractive in term of pricing comparing to other real time tracking RFID system.

One of the possible real life application is crowd control, like the seasonal pilgrimage of Mecca. The identities wouldn't be important but crowd control monitors could note when many of the tagged pilgrims converge in one spot, implying that potentially many other untagged people are also in the same area, and then they could work to divert or otherwise alleviate the congestion.