The Water Cooler: Hacker’s in your soup?

Posted March 27, 2006 at 07:23 PM by XXBryan Glanzberg

Section: Features, Hardware, Security, Miscellaneous, The Water Cooler

Every Monday, Bryan Glanzberg contributes The Water Cooler, a column that bridges the gap between technology and business.

RFID technology has been around for a long time tracking everything from raisins to nuclear weapons in the armed forces.  Until recently, not many companies paid much attention to this technology except as an inventory management tool.  Think again…recently development has shown the ability of some hackers to purchase a product at a grocery store (or anywhere for that matter) and return items after switching RFID tags on the product.  When the products are re-scanned, inventory files become corrupted, updating prices, changing quantities, increasing orders….you get the point.

In an article from Business Week, they interviewed Larry Blue, a VP from Symbol Technologies, a company that develops RFID security technology, and he stated:

“It’s great in theory, it’s almost impossible in practice…“  He cites tight security safeguards that are part of the chip’s design and related system software…

Trying to save business a little bit?  Get on your horse Larry…the next couple of months are not going to be so easy. 

Read [Business Week]