I wrote another article for Computerworld last week on hacking the MiFare RFID Classic chip. Those slick “tap and go” cards used by millions to pay for public transit in many of the world’s major cities? Ends up the chips on those cards can be hacked on a laptop in as little as 12 seconds.
Here’s the link:
I went to Berlin in December for the Chaos Communications Congress, Europe’s biggest hacker con. At the conference, a pair of wily German researchers showed how they reverse-engineered the chip backing some of the world’s most-used subway cards and access keys. In the tech magazine Computerworld today, I explained some of the details of their work.
Check it out here:
There’s a review by me in the February/March issue of Bookforum on the anthology Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music.