"I want to inform people about the vulnerabilities of these cards"
A University of Virginia graduate student and two fellow hackers say they have cracked the encryption code that protects billions of credit cards and security badges. With readily available equipment that cost less than $1,000, the student and his two Germany-based partners dismantled a chip that is found inside many smartcards and mapped out its security algorithm. The hackers were then able to run it through a brute force computer program that broke the encryption after a few hours. If they were to try again, he said, it would take a matter of minutes. I dont want to help attackers, but I want to inform people about the vulnerabilities of these cards, said the Ph.D. candidate in computer engineering at UVa who is originally from Germany. The findings were announced at the Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin. They are not releasing the details of how they beat the chips security code. http://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CDP/MGArticle/CDP_Ba sicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173354778618 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Funny. I've never heard `Project Gutenberg' called `Yahoo' before - http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051004&mode=classic http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
