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Secrecy vs security on the conference circuit
- Posted in: Patents
on 02nd March 2007 Link to this page
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A US firm has been prevented from revealing the dangers of RFID chip-cloning to businesses, after a technology firm alleged that two of its patents had been infringed by the demonstration equipment. RFID (radio-frequency identification) is a growing technology centred around information chips that can be scanned and read to reveal private details. The chips can be implanted under pets’ skins to hold their medical histories, or attached to various retail products as an alternative to barcodes. Their major use, though, is in smartcards.
Risk management and security firm, IOActive, had assumed a responsibility for helping corporations avoid the administrative chaos that could flow from smartcard cloning. However, it emerged on 2 March that a briefing which IOActive had been asked to give at this week’s Black Hat DC Security Conference was scuppered by legal threats from technology firm, HID.
An IOActive press release explains: ‘HID Global Corporation learned of our intended briefing, contacted IOActive, and demanded that IOActive refrain from presenting our findings at the BlackHat Convention, on the basis that “such presentation will subject you to further liability for infringement of HID's intellectual property.” In HID's view, our proposed presentation on proximity badge technology potentially infringed their patents (US Pat. Nos. 5,041,826 and 5,166,676).’
Researcher Chris Paget, who had been scheduled to lead the event, said: ‘Our intent was to disseminate information so people could make informed decisions about RFID technology they're deploying. For example, whether to deploy a proximity card with a secondary factor like a biometric or PIN. But we've been prevented by HID from discussing that, and we believe it's detrimental to the security community.’
Nicole Ozier, technology specialist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said: ‘It's particularly important that the government and the public have all the information on RFID technology. The use of RFID without the proper protections could jeopardise privacy, security, and public safety.’
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