RFID Security

The remarkable thing about his book is its accessibility. The authors have done a good job illustrating technical concepts with straightforward explanations and everyday examples. By the end of the first chapter, I felt like an expert in the inner workings of RFID, even though I started with only the foggiest notions of how it all worked. The reader will quickly understand the differences in RFID technologies used for various purposes like access cards for entering buildings, The SpeedPass keys at Shell stations, automated toll systems on the highways, or the electronic merchandise tags at Wal-Mart. Just differentiating those technologies makes the book worthwhile. Then the second half takes the reader on the adventure of breaking and enhancing the security of RFID systems. RFID is fundamentally susceptible to min-in-the-middle attacks and cloning. In the information security world, those threats gave rise to technologies like firewalls, virtual private networks (VPNs), and intrusion detection systems (IDS). However in most of today's RFID deployments security is downright ignored. Even systems like door access controls - themselves designed for security purposes - suffer basic security flaws. The last section of the book explores ways to secure RFID systems. This section gets a bit technical and may only be interesting to the most devoted security professional, but if you make it through to the end you'll have a solid understanding of when to use RFID, when to avoid it, and how to ensure the greatest value. (See full review at [...])

Security is a growing concern in RFID. Businesses are learning the vulnerabilities inherent in writable tags; skimming and eavesdropping of RFID signals at RFID readers is a concern inside the corporation; and hacking of databases associated with RFID is a concern, as with any database. RFID holds huge promise and is in wide use today, being used by millions of consumers as toll-payment solutions; credit cards; and key entry systems for cars. Up to now much of the focus has been on consumer privacy, i.e., on whether RFID tags will reveal too much information about items in consumers' possession. Attention is just now being placed on the security issues that businesses deploying RFID face. The book addresses these issues and brings to the forefront the challenges facing businesses.