RFID Guardian, open hardware/software to firewall your RFID tags
The RFID Guardian project has released the hardware and software schematics for the latest version of its personal RFID firewall. The RFID Guardian is a device that detects all the RFID tags on your person (passport, transit pass, bank-card, toll-card, car keys, etc), and interdicts them so that they can't answer queries anymore. The Guardian can clone all of these tags, and emit their signal on demand, but unlike a dumb tag, the Guardian only emits when you tell it to, and gives you a central way to set and enforce policy about when you will be identified and by whom.
The new version is completely open, and the relaunched RFID Guardian site includes a wiki, source code repository and bug-tracker. Link (Thanks, Melanie!)
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How does it interdict the existing tags? Through some sort of jamming? Or does it rewrite the content of the tags? (Is that possible?)
I did try checking out their hardware specs, but everything seems to be in PDF files that I don't want to trawl through. Anyone know off-hand?
I saw a demo -- yeah, they interdict them by jamming them so that their responses are indecipherable by readers.
Neat idea, but you wouldn't want to bring that to the airport along with your RFID-passport... the KGB-TSA would send your ass to Abu Ghraib for having an "Improvised Electronic Device".
"Improvised Electronic Device".. what a bullshit term anyway.
That site is very low on details, I was hoping they would at least say what frequency of RFID tags they're claiming to work with, but after 10 minutes of searching I couldn't find a single mention of frequency.
My guess is that this is either LF only, HF only or maybe LF / HF, but almost certainly isn't UHF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rfid#Antenna_types
To do what they claim, their device needs to be a full-fledged tag reader, otherwise it couldn't clone the tags. This isn't too hard with LF/HF tags because they're slow and use very simple anti-collision protocols (if any), but it is very hard with UHF tags. It's especially hard if you're trying to run off a battery.
RFID tags used in animal tracking, key fobs, etc. tend to be LF/HF tags, so this device could work with them. Inventory tags (like the ones used in the Wal*Mart trials) are UHF and so I don't think this device would even recognize them, let alone jam / clone / mimic them.
Fine idea for toll cards and car keys, but I think it's probably illegal to alter passports in this way. It'd be like crossing out your name and age, but writing it down on a piece of paper.
@5 - Bullshit. You're not altering the passport in anyway. IMO, the right to use a device such as this would absolutely be held up under the implied right to privacy provided by the Bill of Rights.
Just for background, Ron Rivest, Ari Juels, and Mike Szydlo should get credit for first proposing an RFID firewall "blocker tag" in 2003: http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/JuelsRivestSzydlo-TheBlockerTag.pdf
Rieback et at. did a great job making the blocker tag a reality.
they should get it Vista Certified, so it can't be called "Improvised" anymore.. ;)
Using this device to hide your RFID tags would probably be legal, as indicated, under the implied right to privacy. Similarly, you could wear foil pants to accomplish the same task.
However, there's no law in place that requires anyone to accept the RFID data emitted by this device as if it were emitted by the original device, for hopefully obvious reasons.
So, you could probably use this to hide the data on your passport, but it wouldn't help you get on a plane. You'd still have to hand over your real passport and allow them to scan the RFID.
A better comparison would be to a photocopy of your passport - which is not likely to get you onto a plane, but does carry some weight, still (especially, say, if the original has been lost or stolen).
The word "interdict" always makes me happy.
Is it too late to ask if we really want to go down this path?
Does the existence of this device convey our tacit acceptance that RFIDification is already a done deal?
I'd feel a lot better about an RFID fryer. Because I don't think we've done the dialog yet. And I'm dismayed by the world we're heading for.
Just a though but, I believe that you could probably use a "faraday sleeve"
From Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
"...passport and credit card shielding sleeves are small, portable Faraday cages."
This solves the issues discussed above, and is after all simple and reliable to use.