Victoria Guzman
Blog Post 1
Radio
Frequency identification chips have become very common but have made it
possible for credit card details and private information to be stolen
wirelessly. MIT and Texas Instruments have been working together in developing
an “unhackable” RFID chip that’s designed to fend off stealing attacks[1].
The
article in gizmag discusses many points, including other countermeasures. RFID
chips reject password attempts after a certain amount of failures but MIT
pointed out that these leave chips open to “power glitch attacks.” Texas
Instruments has constructed prototypes on new chips that overcome side-channel
attacks and power glitch attacks by providing the chip with an onboard power
supply and a non-volatile memory. The writer then goes on to explain how this
is possible. By the use of ferroelectric crystals, they act as a memory and
like a capacitor, which means the chip can run on when the scanning beam is
off. The article also mentions the cost of this added security. Texas
Instruments sponsored the authentication tag research at MIT. This research is
a big step towards low cost security in RFID chips.
Although
this article met very important points, I would have liked to see a longer
explanation of side-channel attacks and power-glitch attacks. In the ExtremeTech
article side-channel attacks were explained as an analysis of power usage
and memory utilization. It also explains that power-glitch attacks involve
cutting power to a device right before it can rotate a secret key and can be
used on various devices. I would have also liked to see more of an opinion in
the gizmag article, like in the ExtremeTech the writer specifically says the
storage and power requirements would increase cost and the output rate is
slower than conventional chips[2].
I did not see that the output rate would be slower in the gizmag article.
I
definitely think more research should be conducted for safer RFID chips
especially since security is incredibly important. Credit card information is
very delicate and holds data people could steal. I hope Texas Instruments
continues to sponsor the research MIT is conducting because they could become a
lead manufacturer in cheap, safer RFID chips.
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