Fred de Beer (Riscure)

Radio Frequency Analysis of RFID card

RFID cards are now widely introduced for various purposes. Large RFID projects in the Netherlands include the electronic passport and the public transport card.

Two typical RFID threats have emerged:

Eavesdropping: an attacker listens to the information exchanged between an RFID card and a terminal and tries to retrieve personal information

RF Cloning: an attacker uses the radio interface as a side-channel for key retrieval. If successful the key can be used to create a clone (exact duplicate). The first attack has already received plenty of media attention in the context of the privacy vulnerability in the electronic passport. We will now address the second type of attack. We show how contactless smart cards are potentially susceptible to RF power analysis, and how one could subsequently make a clone of the original card.  

---

Last Version - $Revision: 1.1 $ / $Date: 2006/05/16 13:50:39 $
Maintained by Jaap-Henk Hoepman
Email: