Smart Cards Vulnerable to Photo-Flash Attacks? 217
belphegor writes "Researchers at the University of Cambridge have
found a way to use a camera flash and microscope to extract data from smart cards. " Notable because its apparently relatively
simple to do and really throws a monkey wrench into a variety of businesses
that use smart cards to store important data.
So let me get this straight, (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, just making sure.
DMCA (Score:1, Interesting)
This is not a problem! (duh!) (Score:2, Interesting)
This could ALREADY be done by anyone with a smart card reader already (which is cheaper than a camera and a microscope I might add!).
Duh!
Sensitive data on cards are stored encrypted using the readers public key. The data on the smartcard can be sent from the reader to a centralised location (over a network, much like the way credit cards are verified in realtime just now) and then decoded and verified by a central point (or a selction of central points for redundancy).
It's a given that the smartcard could always be read - this has been accounted for in design of secure systems that use smart cards (we'll the good ones anyway, addmittedly there are quite few which don't (there are a lot of muppets in this industry)
It's relatively simple to do... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:smartcards have always been lacking (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess what?! Criminals can read the information from a credit card using nothing more sophisticated than their eyes! Does this render credit cards an appalling security risk? No, because when it gets stolen you report it and cancel the card.
Now, if someone figures out a way to _write_ to the smart card to people can top up sums of money or whatever, that's a problem. Also, if the smartcard stores data that's useful in itself - say your real naem and address, or other bank account numbers, or what have you, then you certainly don't want that being read by someone else.
Re:Trust us, OUR cards ARE smart... (Score:1, Interesting)
(Following up a humorous post with facts. Oh well.)
Correct. If you have a spare metal layer, you put that in as an unbroken power rail. Very little light will pass the higher-numbered connective layers.
If someone tries to remove such a layer, they are looking at a daunting task, since they are also removing the power to the circuit. I am surprised they haven't taken the cost of putting in that extra layer already.
That still leaves attacks which probe the charge stored on the floating gates of the flash memories. They are significantly more costly, though.
Re:Easy to do? (Score:2, Interesting)
Last year there was a spat of cases where waiters and other salespeople had been coerced into swiping customer's credit cards through a "special device" that reads the mag track and stores it. Then the device is handled back to low-life who in turns delivers it to someone who in turn reads the data and produces "genuine" credit cards for use by criminals.
It's not easy, but if there is money on doing it you can bet it will be done.
Re:smartcards have always been lacking (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:smartcards have always been lacking (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No worries, we'll just pass more laws... (Score:5, Interesting)
These air bands were open to public ears for decades before the cell phone industry came to life. They chose to use "plain text" audio for analog transmissions to save money with no regard for your privacy. The government stepped in to bail them out when scanning these frequencies became popular and to give the public a false sense of security so they would buy more of them and keep the cell phone industry going strong.
It is also illegal to listen to analog cordless phones (46-49MHz/900MHz) but there is no law preventing the scanners from receiving these bands. I guess the cordless guys could not drum up enough soft money to get that through.
Re:This is not a problem! (duh!) (Score:2, Interesting)
In practice, smartcards are often used as tamperproof devices to represent a third party, such as a bank. In France, for example, the credit card smart cards carry the bank's private key (for a Gilou/Quisquater RSA variant) as well as some additionnal secret information.
This information is not available for any reader but is used internaly for cryptographic computations.