Via comp.risks, across the wire the electric message came: German students crack encryption on over 2bn RFID smartcards made by NXP Semiconductor. The cards in question are NXP’s MiFare Classic type, and are used for public transport….but also for access control in sensitive government installations, it turns out. Inevitably, NXP threw up its hands –…
Read More Can Haz RFID? Noes? I HAZ FN FAL!Back from Barcelona, after a terribly intense 3GSM. This was my third, and the first in which I was actually participating rather than just reporting; I feel the need to decompress, my feet hurt, and I’m feeling the effects of eating breakfast at 5pm, covering every game in town, and finally dining (or rather lunching)…
Read More Back from 3GSM Mobile World CongressWhat it says on the tin. Sadly, I can’t promise anything like Sadly, No! and their superb blogging from CPAC. However, anyone who wants to meet me can import this vCalendar file.
Read More Off to 3GSM Mobile World CongressWhy must you record my phone calls? Are you planning a bootleg EP? (thnx, derausqed!) So said the Specials.Laura Rozen points us to a New York Times story regarding the wider telecoms surveillance effort that led to the great AT&T whistleblower case; it seems as good as certain that they got cracking the moment Bush…
Read More Datenschutz in AmerikaThe Register has been having fun with a script that removes all mention of the word “iPhone” from webpages; a necessary function these days. Better, they developed it to work on an iPhone; but just check out the code. // JavaScript here //This one thinks it’s an object var myRequest = new XMLHttpRequest(); //This is…
Read More ConciseA short compendium of US illegal surveillance links: Qwest “threatened with loss of contracts” after pre-11/9 surveillance request, says exec on insider trading rap. Greenwald blasts immunity proposal. David Isenberg. Much detail. Laura Rozen. I have nothing very original to say, except to point out that there seems to be quite a big iceberg here.…
Read More Uninspired surveillance postWhat do the two halves of the Control Party – its Scottish and Northern wing, and its Southern and Posh wing, both – think should have no price in our society? Recap: a price is a measure of something’s value in terms of the alternatives you forgo by choosing it. Prices are a constraint; they…
Read More PricelessGuess what? This study isn’t in today’s Independent.
Read More The Rays, againSalvador Dali described his work as making use of a paranoid-critical method. Like a paranoiac, he attempted to find meaning in the associations of entirely unrelated images, an analogue to Freudian free association. Tate Modern currently has an exhibition on Dali’s influence from and work for the cinema; perhaps as well as the Looney Tunes…
Read More Paranoid CritiqueRemember the great Vodafone Greece/Ericsson AXE hack? We blogged it and some of its freakish consequences. Now, the IEEE Spectrum has published a detailed analysis of the hack, here. It’s fascinating stuff, but if anything it deepens the mystery. What essentially happened; well, somebody who probably had physical access to the switch used a rare…
Read More Damn Strange “Teenagers”