

Mythbusters RFID episode axed after 'pressure' from credit card firms - astrec
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/03/mythbusters_gagged/

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jrockway
Wouldn't it be cheaper to design reliable technology than to pay lawyers to
strong-arm people into not talking about how unreliable it is?

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mechanical_fish
I seriously doubt it. Lawyers can issue scary legal threats in their sleep.
It's like yawning to them.

Threatening Mythbusters is probably a matter of 15 billable _minutes_ of legal
time. Whereas building a secure RFID is hundreds or thousands of engineering
hours.

Here's something that just occurred to me: One reason why actual security is
more expensive than lawyers is that your security team is up against black-hat
hackers who are willing to spend hundreds of hours working -- anonymously, in
secret, and without pay -- to defeat you. Whereas your legal team is generally
_not_ opposed by a black-hat legal team that is willing to spend hundreds of
_pro bono_ legal hours to try to defeat you in court. Particularly because you
can't challenge a legal threat while simultaneously remaining anonymous and
working in secret.

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jrockway
_Whereas building a secure RFID is hundreds or thousands of engineering
hours._

Building the insecure RFID is also hundreds or thousands of engineering hours.
There is a lot of grunt work that was done regardless; designing the radios,
designing the manufacturing process for the ID chips to be as cheap as
possible, etc. Getting the crypto right isn't much on top of that.

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jmatt
Interesting and unfortunate. I wish the Mythbusters didn't face this sort of
pressure. Maybe they can still do the segment and then put it on their
website. That is less predominate than their TV show.

With information like the defcon slides already readily available I'm
surprised to see such pressure. I guess a segment on a cable TV show is more
public than MIT student newspaper.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=271920>

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Protophore
Interesting that there's already a company making wallets to block RFID
signals: <http://www.rfidblockr.com/>

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yan
There's also <http://difrwear.com>

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lg
I have one of these, and after a mystifying experience at airport security, I
discovered that the RFID shielding is made of metal. No clue whether it
actually works, though.

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khafra
"REAL ID Act and RFID: Privacy and Legal Implications," a talk at The Last
HOPE, tested one such wallet, and determined that while it's closed, it works
--but the one they tried sprung open about an inch when placed on a table, and
the rfid card inside was still readable that way.

<http://www.thelasthope.org/talks.html>
[http://www.thelasthope.org/media/audio/16kbps/REAL_ID_Act_an...](http://www.thelasthope.org/media/audio/16kbps/REAL_ID_Act_and_RFID_Privacy_and_Legal_Implications.mp3)

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tocomment
Does anyone know an easy/inexpensive way to "clone" an RFID card? (My work
only lets me have one card, but I want to keep one in my car and one in a my
wallet since I need it both in the garage and in the building.)

I figure it shouldn't be too hard, it's just sending out a radio frequency,
right?

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evgen
This particular "myth" has already been busted. Looks like El Reg is a running
a bit behind the new of the day:
<http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/32254>

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biohacker42
So first Adam claims they were pressured into dropping the segment.

Then bad publicity ensues and what do you know: Adam now claims he had a brain
fart and all the big corporations say there just giddy over the Mythbusters
segment. They were bending over backwards to help!

Shucks, what a silly misunderstanding!

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josefresco
Why can't they just do the episode and keeping-in-line with past 'sensitive'
topics like bomb making, skip over the part where they _actually_ tell you how
to do it?

Or would it even be possible given how easy it is?

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thenextweb
Incredible! Hope they show it online soon. Would become an instant hit...

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noor420
Does this mean hackers will be RFID-Driving for my credit card info?

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incomethax
well, when its this easy it gets concerning...
[http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/03/19/how-to-hack-an-
rfide.htm...](http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/03/19/how-to-hack-an-rfide.html)

