While retailers are hoping radio-frequency identification tags can revolutionize the inventory process, these small devices could be paving the way for a new era of electronic crime.
Well as the technology is adopted more widely a thief could conceivably mark down the price of an expensive piece of jewelry before paying for it at an automated checkout counter, underage hackers could purchase alcohol or adult movies, and pranksters could simply reprogram the inventory of an entire store by just walking up and down the isles.
To further the problem, Lukas Grunwald at DN-Systems Enterprise Solutions GmbH has publicly released RFDump, a simple utility capable of editing data stored upon RFID tags.
RFDump is a tool to detect RFID-Tags and show their meta information: Tag ID, Tag Type, manufacturer etc. The user data memory of a tag can be displayed and modified using either a Hex or an ASCII editor. In addition, the integrated cookie feature demonstrates how easy it is for a company to abuse RFID technology to spy on their customers.
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