Radio chips being marketed as a replacement for the barcode threaten consumer privacy and are able to carry a virus, Dutch university scientists revealed on Wednesday. An infected radio frequency identity (RFID) tag is able to disrupt the database that reads information on the chip. Scientists at Amsterdam's Free University were able to create a chip infected with a virus, and then use it to infect the database. Before this study, supporters of RFID assumed that the technology could not modify the back-end software that reads it.
"In our research, we have discovered that if certain vulnerabilities exist in the RFID software, an RFID tag can be (intentionally) infected with a virus and this virus can infect the backend database used by the RFID software," the researchers wrote in a paper discussing the flaw.
"From there it can be easily spread to other RFID tags."
The group says their experience in warning those using the technology about its security issues shows that many are dismissing such a notion as academic and theoretical. Thus, the group is making the malware code publicly available in order to convince users that the problem is potentially serious.
