Verayo's "unclonable" RFID uses physical characteristics to thwart hackers

This era of RFIDs everywhere means a new era of hacking, one where a reader and a copy of RFDump are just as important as a proxied Internet connection and a telnet client were in the past. As MythBusters attempted to show, existing RFID chips and tags seem universally hackable and clonable, whether they be inside your passport or inside of you, but a new one from Verayo is said to be totally impenetrable -- for reals this time. It uses Physical Unclonable Functions, or PUF, a randomized coating of wires that both protect the internals from interlopers and also return a (supposedly) unique identifier that (supposedly) can't be duped. Truth in advertising? Hackers worldwide are itching to find out after the thing's formal introduction tomorrow morning at the RFID World conference -- surely the hottest ticket in Vegas this week.

[Via Slashdot]

[CraigJ @ Sep 9th 2008 10:05AM]

Doesn't matter if the "chip" isn't clonable. Once you've read the chip you can emulate the chip's response with software.

I give a week till some hacker figures it out.

[Kris @ Sep 9th 2008 11:11AM]

Exactly. I don't understand the "security" of this. Once a chip sends out its information, we can grab it and reproduce it. It doesn't matter how the RFID tag is laid out or physically connected. In the end, it's a bunch of data that's transmitted.

[dervheid @ Sep 9th 2008 10:13AM]

A week?
That long, you think?

[CraigJ @ Sep 9th 2008 10:22AM]

Trying to be kind to the designer...

[Rebel6381 @ Sep 9th 2008 10:18AM]

The guys over at Mythbusters would love to get their hands on this one. Oh wait, there tied by the handcuffs of the advertising that pays their salarys....BUSTED!!!

[T.H. @ Sep 9th 2008 10:23AM]

As they're PUFfing and PUFfing away, passing around the ceremonial cigar, basking in the cloud of their own success, someone, somewhere, will break this and then they'll say, "Well, it's unhackable and unclonable, it's just that we didn't think of this one little flaw, but if we did, it'd truly be unhackable then!"

As they say, there are no foolproof locks because fools are so ingenious.

[Ed @ Sep 9th 2008 10:25AM]

call me when some schmuck in the back of the room yells out "Eureka!" ... in the meantime, I'll be down the street enjoying the "scenery".

[Balam Herrera @ Sep 9th 2008 10:38AM]

cant apple just make these chips???

Then they would work flawlessly.

[Rebel6381 @ Sep 9th 2008 10:59AM]

i see someone else is puffing on the ceremonial cigar as T.H. so put it

congrats on the biggest bonehead of the thread

[Philippe @ Sep 9th 2008 11:02AM]

mmmmm. Apple chips...

[jharker1987 @ Sep 9th 2008 11:13AM]

u mean flawless like MobileMe?

[kal326 @ Sep 9th 2008 11:07AM]

PUF the magic RFID chip claims unhackability
just wait till the haxors of the world make an ass of thee!

[Kris @ Sep 9th 2008 11:14AM]

When will companies learn: The physical configuration of RFID will _never_ matter as long as it's transmitting an RFID signal. An RFID signal is easy to tamper with and reproduce.

RFID is insecure and dumb. We should have dumped it long ago.

[Wwhat @ Sep 9th 2008 11:15AM]

As I understand it basically this is the same trick as they used on DVD's, they add a bit of info that normal readers don't read and isn't part of the industry-standard response so over-the-counter RFID's don't send it.
So yeah it'll take a bit to find a way to get something to send the code, and to jury-rig a reader that also reads the extra ID, if needed.
The bit about the wires is just for show to dazzle the press and senators and assorted naïve technonubs , obviously nobody checks RFID's under an electron microscope under normal circumstances.
The idea here is that since it's not using industry standards it can nicely sell tons of readers at inflated monopolistic prices which won't help for long but that's where the wires and DNA nonsense comes in, the appropriations commissions of governments eat that kind of thing up.
Maybe I'm just cynical though, hah.

[erislover @ Sep 9th 2008 12:27PM]

Security through obscurity? That's genius. I'm surprised it hasn't been tempted before.

[jgrnt1 @ Sep 9th 2008 11:17AM]

@ Balam Herrera

If Apple made them, we'd have to purchase everything through iTunes.

[Adderz @ Sep 9th 2008 11:25AM]

It looks like a carpet sample.

[John @ Sep 9th 2008 11:44AM]

Unless their new security feature involves RFID chips rubbing eachother down to check for wires, I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this.

[G99 @ Sep 9th 2008 11:59AM]

There essentially is no real way to make RFID hack proof. I know when I request anything that has the option i will do anything I can to avoid the RFID chips.

To me, until something much more secure comes along I would like to see a biometric add-on to any RFID swipe. So to make the card work you have to use a fingerprint [or retina] scanner and also swipe the card or item. That way it prevents any random passerby stealing the numbers and getting it to work. It is not perfect and can be faked [mythbusters did it]. But hey. it is better than what they have now.

[chad @ Sep 9th 2008 12:10PM]

So if you're planning on using biometrics anyway, why not simply drop the RFID nonsense and go with biometrics?

[BlueDragonX @ Sep 9th 2008 1:06PM]

Because this way you've got to steal a guys card along with his finger =D

[Magallanes @ Sep 9th 2008 12:26PM]

Without handshaking (so a two ways communication) its almost impossible to be hacker proof.

[linuxamp @ Sep 10th 2008 12:07AM]

So why don't they do that? Is it cost prohibitive?

[Bratan @ Sep 9th 2008 12:28PM]

My guess is that they will use technique similar to the CD/DVD protection mechanism (like someone mentioned) which involves a designed physical imperfection to the chip/signal, which can't be reproduced/simulated (at least easily). I'm talking about a signal that cannot be reproduced without specific physical qualities of the transmitter... So the only way to hack it would be to steal materials or technology of reproducing those chips.
Had anyone considered that they might know what they are doing?

[joe blow @ Sep 10th 2008 2:07AM]

yeah, I've been trying to copy DVD's & CD's for years now. It's foolproof.

[Minilap @ Sep 9th 2008 12:30PM]

Except that they are a bit too late. Steinberg syncrosoft and interLok are already proved to be unlockable.

[ghoti42 @ Sep 9th 2008 1:15PM]

PUF will go puff in no time

[Nathan Williams @ Sep 9th 2008 1:53PM]

Try reading the paper. Their technique isn't bulletproof, but it's better than you're giving them credit for. The device is sent a challenge and computes a response; the value of the response depends on the physical parameters of the device that are hard to control (difference in circuit delays between two paths, for example). The usage model is that you issue a some random challenges at the factory and store the responses for that chip; later, someone wants to know "Is this the real thing?" They ask the server for a challenge string, send it to the chip, and send the response back to the server, which tells you if it's good or not.

It's true that you could record and replay these challenges and responses, so the intent is to use them as one-time passwords; this is expected to be used when, say, a Walgreen's gets a shipment of Viagra and wants to be sure it's the real thing and not a cheap substitute that was swapped in overnight at a warehouse somewhere. Thus, only getting a few uses out of it is enough. The space of challenges is also pretty large (they prototyped 64 bits), so you can't make a practical attack by making a device that knows all the answers.

The biggest risk is that the "randomness" of the PUF can be characterized by a small number of well-chosen queries, and that the function just isn't as random as they want it to be. It's possible, but that might still push the difficulty of making a "clone" version of this high enough that it's no longer worth it for a bottle of pills or similar-scale item.