RFID: Speedpass Hacked
September 26, 2006
Johns Hopkins professor Avi Ruben and his graduate students were able to quickly find a way to reproduce an existing Speedpass token. They built a small device that attaches to a laptop, which can then swipe Mobil Speedpass codes just by casually walking by someone who has one in their pocket.
I think these types of things will be increasingly common. My favorite part of this video is when they say that when interviewing companies responsible for creating Speedpass, they say it is a non-issue. Crooks are apparently no sophisticated enough to walk around with laptops and use software to transfer codes between devices…
Thanks to David Skrabal for sending along this YouTube video to me.
Tags: david skrabal, mobil, mobil speedpass, RFID, speedpass
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[...] Zach reports that a professor at Johns Hopkins University has successfully been able to read, decrypt and forge Mobile’s Speedpass RFID tag after only a close pass with a reader and laptop. [...]
Ya know, this would be a pretty good scheme if you could get your hands on one of those devices. Most people don’t check their ExxonMobil bill to match up all the times they filled up - if you were careful and used several accounts, you could have free gas for life…
I have no doubt someone with medium level computer skills could get themselves free gas for life.