RFID technology | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a hardware backdoor within a particular model of MIFARE Classic contactless cards that could allow authentication with an unknown key and open hotel rooms and office doors. The attacks have been demonstrated against FM11RF08S, a new variant of MIFARE Classic that was released by Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics in 2020. "The FM11RF08S backdoor enables any entity with knowledge of it to compromise all user-defined keys on these cards, even when fully diversified, simply by accessing the card for a few minutes," Quarkslab researcher Philippe Teuwen said . The secret key is not only common to existing FM11RF08S cards, the investigation found that "the attacks could be executed instantaneously by an entity in a position to carry out a supply chain attack." Compounding matters further, a similar backdoor has been identified in the previous generation, FM11RF08, that's protected with another key. The backdoor has been obse...

If you often leave your valuable and expensive stuff like laptop and passports in the hotel rooms, then beware. Your room can be unlocked by not only a malicious staff having access to the master key, but also by an outsider. A critical design vulnerability in a popular and widely used electronic lock system can be exploited to unlock every locked room in a facility, leaving millions of hotel rooms around the world vulnerable to hackers. The vulnerability has been discovered in Vision by VingCard locking system—made by the world's largest lock manufacturer, Assa Abloy, and deployed in more than 42,000 facilities in 166 different countries, which equals to millions of doors. After thousands of hours work, F-Secure researchers Tomi Tuominen and Timo Hirvonen managed to build a master key that could be used to unlock doors and gain entry to any of the hotel rooms using the Vision by VingCard digital lock technology, without leaving a trace on the system. How Hackers Built ...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Biohacking could be a next big thing in this smart world. Over two years ago, a hacker implanted a small NFC chip in his left hand right between his thumb and his pointer finger and hacked Android smartphones and bypassed almost all security measures, demonstrating the risks of Biohacking. At the end of the same year, another hacker implanted a small NFC chip with the private key to his Bitcoin wallet under his skin , making him able to buy groceries or transfer money between bank accounts by just waving his hand. And this is soon going to be a reality, at least in one tech company in Wisconsin. Marketing solution provider Three Square Market (32M) has announced that it had partnered with Swedish biohacking firm BioHax International for offering implanted microchips to all their employees on 1st August, according to the company's website . Although the programme is optional, the company wants at least more than 50 of its employees to undergo the Biohacking procedure. ...

Do you know about RFID chips and how many you are carrying at this moment? Today, RFID chips are built-in all sorts of items, including your credit cards, travel swipe cards, library books, grocery store cards, security tags, implanted medical records, passports and even the access cards provided by companies. But, What actually is an RFID chip? Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a small electronic device consisting of a chip on which data can be encoded, and an antenna used to transmit that data. It is typically used for short-distance communication of information. However, there is concern that these RFID chips could easily be hacked, and the information on these chips could easily be stolen by hackers. After all, they don't even require physical access to these chips in order to get data from it. The good news is: Researchers at MIT have developed a new way that prevents RFID chips from hacking. Although the information on RFID chip is pro...

Are you the one who simply punch your wallet against a reader to get into your office? Then surely your office is using Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) cards to manage building access and security. However, these most common access control systems are incredibly easy to hack — and now more than ever before. Thanks to a $10 tiny device developed by two security researchers that can easily circumvent these RFID cards. Dubbed BLEkey or Bluetooth Low Energy device is a tiny little device designed to be embedded in an RFID card reader, a small box you swipe or touch your card to open doors. BLEkey exploits a vulnerability in the Wiegand communication protocol used by the majority of RFID card readers today in order to clone and skim your RFID-equipped cards. Grab your BLEkey for Just $10 Mark Baseggio from security firm Accuvant and Eric Evenchick from Faraday Future who developed BLEkey are going to present their findings at next week's Black Hat se...

Security researchers from Newcastle University in the UK have found a way to steal larger amounts of money from people's pockets using just a mobile phone, due to a security glitch Visa's contactless payment cards. Contactless payment cards use a cryptoprocessor and RFID technology to perform secure transactions without a need to insert the card in a reader, even an NFC-equipped mobile device may also be used as a payment card. But there is a specified limits country-wise. Contactless payment cards are meant to have a limit of £20 per purchase in UK, using which shoppers can buy things by simply tapping their card on a scanner, without having to type in a PIN. But exploiting a flaw in its protocol could allow cyber criminals to manipulate the cards to transfer up to $999,999.99 in foreign currency into a scammer's account. Researchers on Wednesday at the 21st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, detailed the attack which rely on a "rogue POS te...