I guess it's just a matter of time before someone is charged with disabling the RF signature of one of these tags. I'd guess that here in the US, the rule will be "if you bought it you can disable it, but prior to that you're not allowed to jam it."
Humm...one wonders if there's already some common electronics that emit in the same range as the scan, or if when "defective" (wink wink nudge nudge) will jam such a signal.
-TD
From: Thomas Shaddack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: cypherpunks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Brinwear at Benetton. Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 18:16:25 +0100 (CET)
Seems the trend is here. We can thank Benetton for providing us with a playground for live tests of the capabilities and limits of the system.
We have several ways for countermeasures.
Passive countermeasures are shielding or tag destruction. We can locate the transceiver, then enclose it in a Faraday cage. Or we can locate the tag and physically remove or destroy it. Or we can irradiate the entire object with powerful-enough electromagnetic radiation.
Active countermeasures can involve jammers, creating a "RF privacy sphere". One of the possibilities is a virtual tag that will respond to read attempt with randomly generated signal strong enough to drown all other tags in it. Or, to generate forged signatures, making the reader think it is receiving a genuine signal, over which we have control; allowing us to change our "wireless appearance" on-fly, even copying the tag signatures of other people as they pass around, temporarily borrowing them. The sky is the limit of possibilities here.
Part of the indirect passive countermeasures toy chest is a device that will alert its owner when the RF read beam is detected, and allow pinpointing its source.
The changes we are about to expect are moving the battle to another stage. Let's get familiar with the new weapons about to hit the battlefield, and devise the appropriate strategies.
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