The Big Cell Phone Non-Attack

Filed in archive Privacy and Security on February 28, 2006

A couple of weeks ago there was a report about cell phones (mobile phones to everyone outside North America) being used to "kill" RFID tags.

If you were losing sleep over it, well, now you can turn over and get a little shut eye. And not worry anymore.

It turns out, the claim was theoretical only -- a cell phone has not actually been used to kill RFID tags.

Further, the kind of tags they were claiming could be killed are ones for use in supply chain settings, where security is not a primary concern.

Mark Roberti, Editor of the RFID Journal, takes to task those who made the oiriginal claim and the journalists that report the stories without proper context or that do not get the story straight:

The problem is that stories about security weaknesses get overplayed in the media. Journalists love to scare people because it encourages them to read articles. They love to use phrases such as "security expert," "encryption algorithm"and "researchers at (fill in the blank) university" to give credibility to claims. They tend, however, to leave out the context that makes the story less frightening, which means end users could make bad business decisions based on misinformation, and people are led to worry more than they need to about these issues.

Read the whole thing at the RFID Journal.