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“My tires have RFID tags in them. Yours probably do also”
- greenyoda 11y agoOne of the replies below the tweet points out that RFID tags have been present in tires since 2003, and provides this reference: http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269 http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269 The intended purpose is being able to track tires that are subject to safety recalls.
- programmarchy 11y agoWow, this indicates that they're not just tagging batches, but that every tire has its own unique id.
- dredmorbius 11y agoYes. Suggestions of "smart IEDs" -- roadside bombs which wait for a specific RFID to be detected -- have floated around for years.
- stdbrouw 11y agoNitpick, but I don't think you could still talk about an improvised explosive device at that point.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sveiss 11y agoWhy not? At the risk of putting myself on a watchlist somewhere, stringing together a Raspberry Pi-class computer and a RFID reader to replace the mobile phone remote detonator in an IED doesn't make it any less improvised.
- feld 11y agoI think his point is that it's no longer improvised but rather well engineered
- TeMPOraL 11y agoBut it's still made of COTS parts and assembled by an individual, as opposed to dedicated hardware being used by a weapons manufacturer. I'm probably on the lists already, so I'll just point out that turning an IED into an RFID-scanning "smart IED" seems to require only a somewhat competent electrical engineering undergrad, a laptop, and less than $10 worth in parts. The reason they aren't widely used is probably because there are better methods than playing with RFIDs.
- samstave 11y agoHopping on the list: I'm just actually surprised that nobody has fixed some explosive to a little drone and flown it into some political target and detonated it. Or a bunch off these landing on cars or buildings and detonating.
- Gracana 11y agoWhy would anyone go to such lengths? What's wrong with the usual methods?
- dghughes 11y agoKeep it simple just like grandma used to make; C4 and a Nokia 3310. Homeland Security and the NSA can detect satire, right?
- TeMPOraL 11y agoSome time ago Secret Service posted a work order[0] for software that could detect (among other things) "sarcasm and false positives" in social media content, so someone is most likely working on it. [0] - https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=ccc0db429808a71d74e89de5d300a5c2&_cview=1 https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=ccc..., actual specification in [1] [1] - https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=fb2ca11b7d9ca8c61e5ee6d8ae69ad4d https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=fb2ca11b7d9ca8c61e5ee6d8ae... (warning, .docx file)
- stordoff 11y agoIf you can get enough access to read the target RFID, couldn't you just plant a device then, rather than a roadside device?
- tzs 11y agoYou might only have access when the vehicle is moving on the road. For instance, you might plant a roadside reader/logger, and have an observer away from the road watching. The observer notes the time whenever a military vehicle goes by. After you've logged a few military vehicles, you retrieve the logs, match them up to the observer's time stamps, and now you've got a list of targets for your roadside RFID based bomb.
- dredmorbius 11y agoKnowing the target RFID doesn't mean proximate access. You might, say, attack a hardened, highly secured, professionally maintained electronic data system. Say the integrated business operations system of a large nationwide tyres-service company. Pull off the RFID and owner data. Apply information as, where, and when desired. And this is why, boys and girls, data are liability.
- cperciva 11y agoWhich is one of the reasons the US president's motorcade includes broad-spectrum radio jammers.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoYup, and when this came out I took my RFID reader kit out and read the tags on my tires. And yes they were all unique. Some folks at UC Berkeley built an RFID reading device you could put by the side of a (one lane) road (like an on-ramp) and read the tires from it. From a traffic analysis standpoint it would be much more effective than those hoses they put across the road to measure cars going by. At the point we reach Tools Offering Aggregated Surveillance Things (TOAST), you'll be able to figure out where a tire (and the car it was attached to) was 24/7
- tzs 11y ago> Some folks at UC Berkeley built an RFID reading device you could put by the side of a (one lane) road (like an on-ramp) and read the tires from it. From a traffic analysis standpoint it would be much more effective than those hoses they put across the road to measure cars going by. Why would that be much more effective? Do the hoses have significant count errors, or is it that the RFID system will let them tell what make/model of tire went by and so infer data such as vehicle type that they do not get from the hose system?
- lostlogin 11y agoIt would be pretty handy for tire manufacturers to know where best to place their adverts.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoThe hose system tells you total traffic but unless you have two of them you don't know what direction the cars are going. Also it can't tell how cars "flow" so where cars enter the measured area and where they exit. Traffic planners need flow to understand if "express" lanes would help for example.
- hammock 11y agoCan you offer some more thoughts on TOAST?
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI know that Goodyear was resistant to tags for many years - they cost too much. Margin on tires is razor thin.
- bitL 11y agoMost new factories are now 99% automated. Literally 5 people running the whole facility.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoRetread is where tags really shine. And that's not automated yet?
- boznz 11y agoAn RFID is just a unique serial number no real different to a barcode or a written serial no, just it can be read easier (and generally matched to a UID on a maintenance database or suchlike) Yes the manufacturer can also store encrypted data on one but I honestly cannot figure out how an external party could abuse this system.
- codefreakxff 11y agoIt really doesn't take very much creativity to abuse this system. How about a database of who bought each tire cross referenced to a monitoring strip in the road to see who is going where? How about that monitoring strip being in the entrance to every fast food joint, restaurant, store, mall, etc - now you can track drivers just like we track browsers. Since we have your name, we can cross reference your driving and browsing history.
- digi_owl 11y agoAnd if you put a video camera in a strategic location you can capture every license plate that pass by...
- danielrhodes 11y agoThis is exactly what I was thinking. As much as these RFIDs seem like a privacy issue, a license plate is already there and in many ways a more accessible way to track a vehicle.
- deelowe 11y agoEspecially now that state governments have redesigned the plates to be more easily read by OCR.
- jack_pp 11y agoThat is not the same. Rfid tracking / filtering is much easier and more precise than video. There is no need for computer vision or any kind of expensive computing. Also it is far easier to abuse by evil civilians. Consider the overhead of installing a high enough quality video camera on a public road for a criminal compared to an Rfid reader.
- gnarbarian 11y agoI bet they're used for the tire pressure sensors.
- Arcanum-XIII 11y agoNope, the sensor is in the valve most of the time, albeit there's one version in the tire (not compatible with lot of cars atm)
- lifeisstillgood 11y agoWhat is he using to detect the chip? I would like a recommendation on a good detector
- tim333 11y agoThe device in the photo appears to be one of these http://www.ebay.com/itm/125Khz-RFID-EM4305-Card-Reader-Writer-Copier-Writer-programmer-burner-USB-FA-/361193718200 http://www.ebay.com/itm/125Khz-RFID-EM4305-Card-Reader-Write... Edit the 125khz ones and 13Mhz ones look similar so not sure which.
- bitL 11y agoI can't wait to see videos of people trying to put their tires into microwave ovens to get rid of RFID tags, like what Germans are doing with their IDs :-D
- pdkl95 11y agoI suspect passing a degaussing coil over the tire for a while will kill the tags. If that doesn't work, it's really easy to make an HERF gun. // Safety Warning - Actually building an HERF gun can be extremely dangerous, and should only be attempted by people familiar with both high-voltage safety and radio safety. Seriously, RF burns can be really nasty. //
- awqrre 11y agoor take the microwaves out of the microwave like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCe2UG1UXi4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCe2UG1UXi4
- kazkas 11y agoThe tracking potential is very low for tire RFID tags because every tire as well as every car has some sort of visual identification. However, the main advantage I see is that you can very easily find out who dumps used tires in a river or in the woods.
- bitL 11y agoSo they would burn them instead now. Better?
- gaius 11y agoWhen your car has a license plate and there are ANPR cameras all over the city... The tracking horse has long since bolted.
- chrisseaton 11y agoHow is anyone able to steal cars anymore with those cameras?
- dawnbreez 11y agoPresumably by removing the license plate in an alley.
- fweespeech 11y agoStrip and switch tires/license plates in blind spots.
- awqrre 11y agomost cars worth stealing are also probably connected 24/7 [1] 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/ford-exec-gps-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/ford-exec-gps-2014-1
- tamana 11y agoHow is that "most cars worth stealing"?
- awqrre 11y agothat's just one example... look up other brands, most major brand's cars are connected, at least their somewhat recent products
- fweespeech 11y agohttp://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2014/08/18/the-most-stolen-new-and-used-cars-in-america/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2014/08/18/the-most... And disconnecting a GPS lead isn't hard.
- amelius 11y agoYour shoes probably have RFID tags in them too. http://www.rfidjournalevents.com/retail/ http://www.rfidjournalevents.com/retail/
- tomohawk 11y agoThere's also this: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/tracking_automo.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/tracking_auto... and this: http://resources.impinj.com/h/i/2503326-vehicle-tracking-with-rfid http://resources.impinj.com/h/i/2503326-vehicle-tracking-wit...
- stuaxo 11y agoTracking is easier and more pervasive with APNR.
- grymoire1 11y ago(1) Video surveillance is used everywhere on police cars, traffic lights, etc. It's cheap, practical and can work at (2) Tires already have serial numbers. (TIN). I don't know if they track these numbers when tired are installed or not, but if they do, then RFID just makes the job faster. If that is your concern, pay cash for tires and install them yourself in your garage. (3) RFID would be REALLY hard to do as you are driving down the road. It takes time to power up the RFID tag, send it a message, and get a response. I found a reference of 300 milliseconds for a reading. That's IF you are two inches away, and the object is NOT moving. If the tag is at the edge of the tire (as the picture implies) - where are you going to put the reader so that it can get within 2 inches of the tire? And how can it read the tag at 40 miles an hour, when the tag is spinning around the edge of the tire? If the sensor is embedded in the road, you have to drive directly OVER it, and the tag has to be at the bottom of the tire, and the car has to be driving very very slow. That's assuming the sensor and the power cable will survive being embedded in asphalt. A sensor near the edge of the road would be too far away to get a reading, If someone can get within 2 inches of your tires while you are driving 40 miles an hour, you have other things to worry about.
- gpvos 11y agoTraffic lights, parking places, traffic jams, there are still many possibilities.
- cobookman 11y ago> That's IF you are two inches away, and the object is NOT moving. If the tag is at the edge of the tire (as the picture implies) - where are you going to put the reader so that it can get within 2 inches of the tire? 900Mhz RFID tags can be read from over 30ft away. Can't find a video but someone @ defcon was able to get a read from 250ft away using a yagi antenna & power way over the FCC limits.
- grymoire1 11y agoYes, but there's a big difference between a one-time demo under ideal conditions, and something that can be mass-produced and used daily. In the case of tires, (1) the car is likely moving, (2) the tires are spinning at the same time, (3) there are 4 tires (at least - not to mention shoes, credit cards, etc.) and all RFID tags of the same frequency will respond to the reader at the same time, making it very difficult to capture the ID of a single tag. There is no collision avoidance in the transmission. Yes, I'm sure some special technology can be developed that can track and follow a single car as it travels down a road, and isolate the tags, but the police already use ANPR to identify amber alerts, stolen vehicles, unpaid fines, etc. ANPR systems cost under $200, and some (according to Wikipedia) will work even if the car is traveling at 120 MPH. It makes no sense to attempt to use RFID for tracking cars.
- Kenji 11y agoI don't see the problem, just wrap your tires in tin foil ;)
- xg15 11y agoMaybe I'm naive, but this doesn't seem a very big deal in today's world. So this would theoretically - if you have enough time and power to equip all intersections with hidden RFID readers mounted below the road - allow you to collect a sort of poor-man's location history of cars. However, it's restricted to the things that happen in the area you bugged, it doesn't tell you anything about who is driving the car and if all routes are done by the same person and it captures nothing that takes place outside the car. Compare that to the almost complete, 100% personalized location history you get when you manage to get your "flashlight" app installed on an android phone...
- stordoff 11y agoI can't say I like the idea of being tracked, but your vehicle already has at least one ID tag that is easier to read at range - the registration plate. Coupled with other identifying tag you are likely to be carrying (e.g. WiFi MAC addresses - I know at least one bank in the UK uses this to measure branch visit numbers), this doesn't seem like a big deal (from a privacy standpoint at least).
- iaw 11y agoI suspect these are for inventory and recall tracking. While they could be co-opted for more nefarious purposes it makes sense from a manufacturing perspective.
- ryanmarsh 11y agoThis seems like a great way to optimize parking spot usage. Could RFID readers be used to know if a parking spot had tires in it? Could this be deployed attached to parking meters or in parking garages cheaply? If not how much cheaper do the readers have to get?
- boznz 11y agoOut of interest I just checked both my cars bridgestone and toyo brands bought in NZ in 2014 with my 125Khz and a 13.7Mhz (mifare) reader and found nothing, Could be UHF RFID but I don't have a reader for one of those. I guess if the state is out to get you that bad you could move to NZ :-)