Australia's Geekiest Man

An anonymous reader writes "Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick? Computerworld has a story up about the outgoing Linux Australia group president's hacked home, in which just about anything from watering the lawn, to opening his blinds, or checking the mail can be controlled through a software environment. Jonathan Oxer is an electronics and coding whiz who apparently has an RIFD tag implanted in his arm that opens his front door, and his front gate is hooked up with gigabit Ethernet — able to tell him when someone enters the property or send him a virtual email or sms to say he has real mail. Apparently the iPod Touch has just inspired him to begin linking all his little hardware hacks together into the one single, software controlled handheld touch device. I wonder if Steve Jobs ever thought the Touch would end up being used this way?"

Pretty damn cool

But I can imagine that you might not always want to have your front door unlocked whenever you're near and I imagine it might be a pain in the ass to get out the Touch and disable it if there were some sort of emergency that required your door being locked.

Re:Pretty damn cool

So a good EMP is the only way to keep the people who kidnapped you out of your house?

Then again

If you're being chased up the garden path then I'd choose the expediency of an RFID lock rather than fumbling around for keys - seen enough movies to know how that ends.

What sort of emergency do you have in mind? No home security will deter a determined malicious threat from entering, but a gadgetted up house you could fully control with a device that fits in your pocket, could create enough of a distraction to escape.

Re:Then again

True, most horror movies would have to skip that scene with this technology in place... sure wouldn't be too tense

Yeah perhaps I didn't think that one through completely, but I'm just not comfortable with security measures being implemented or disengaged simply by proximity.

Speaking of your distraction scenario, and clearly because I read too much /., I had a vision of all TVs and computer screens splashing goatse on the would-be evildoer. Something tells me that would at least confuse most anybody's plans.

Re:Then again

More disturbing is that it's not *your* proximity. It's *your arm's* proximity. This technology could bring about a whole new and horribly gruesome form of breaking and entering. :|

Re:Then again

It's here already.

Malaysia car thieves steal finger [bbc.co.uk]

Virtual email?

What exactly is a virtual email? Can the system send him one when he gets a real email too?

Re:Virtual email?

A "real" email requires a printer, a wooden table and some photography, as regular readers of http://www.thedailywtf.com/ [thedailywtf.com] are well aware. A "virtual" email is simply an electronic copy of one of those photo's, preferably in .doc or .ppt format.

Re:Virtual email?

No, real hippies would never condescend to use .doc or .ppt. Real geeks would use whatever tool is suited best for a given task, which may or may not Microsoft products.

Cancerous Police state much?

Just as an FYI for anyone considering this, implanted RFID have been known to cause a high incidence of cancer around the implantation area. There's research showing it in animal models, I found out after my pet had to have his RFID tracker replaced (they use this in pets to let vet offices identify your pet if it gets lost).

Apparently the body doesn't like certain subcutaneous implanted foreign objects and cancerous growths build around it.

The other issue I would like to point out is that putting RFID chips into people and treating them as cattle has for some time been a dream of the uber wealthy elite classes. This tracks back to the eugenics movement to present day. See Aaron Russo's documentary "America: Freedom to Fascism". [youtube.com]

As such, I would not be in a hurry to usher in the era of slave I mean people tracking.

Re:Cancerous Police state much?

The other issue I would like to point out is that putting RFID chips into people and treating them as cattle has for some time been a dream of the uber wealthy elite classes.

Why? By definition, people who are obscenely rich have lots and lots of money, which is a far more effective way to manipulate people than RFID tags. Come on, really, do you picture the super-rich saying, "man, what I'd really like is to be able to implant electronics into the working class so I can watch their every move"? They're rich. They have yachts, and private aircraft, and small islands, and can do anything they want with their lives... do you really think they give a shit about what time Joe Sixpack staggers home with some drunken bar skank?

Re:Cancerous Police state much?

Why? By definition, people who are obscenely rich have lots and lots of money, which is a far more effective way to manipulate people than RFID tags.

I'm not uber-rich yet, but when I get there, I want my minions to have RFID tags as well as silver lycra bodysuits.

It's a style thing.

Re:Cancerous Police state much?

The notion of people-tracking with RFID is a bit far-fetched, isn't it? These things have a pretty short range, maybe a few meters at most if I recall correctly. Tracking a person isn't going to do much good unless there were sensors everywhere.

That being said, I'm also in no hurry to have any tracking devices implanted in me either.

Research much? Scare easily?

implanted RFID have been known to cause a high incidence of cancer around the implantation area

Known? Implanting "subcutaneous foreign objects" might cause cancer, see the quote below. And the research done on mice indicates it typically happens in one percent or two.

"It's important to emphasize that those studies are not necessarily sufficient to view these implants as known hazards. The data suggest that the devices foster cancer by causing inflammation of the tissues that encapsulate them. There is a large amount of scientific literature linking cancer and inflammation (the National Cancer Institute has some information on the matter). RFID tags turn out not to be the only form of animal tagging that causes cancer through inflammation; standard metallic ear tags can do so as well. That paper also notes that there have been a number of case reports where human prosthetic implants have induced cancers in the surrounding tissues.", taken from Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]

No Science, Silly Math

If we gave them all implants and the same percentage of people got cancer that's 30 to 60 MILLION people!

No, I said the OP claimed a HUGE percentage got cancer when in fact they don't. Secondly there was no research done on humans, and mice are not humans.

The fact that 1-2% could even possibly get cancer does not mean 30-60 million people will get it. Science is a bit more advanced than that. I'm not giving you any credit for your math skills. In fact it's probably unlikely they will get cancer at all from this "potential" threat. You are just making outrageous claims from no evidence what so ever.

I would take those odds, they're really quite good, but I don't want to be tagged none the less.

Re:Research much? Scare easily?

I was shocked to hear someone on TV say they got their whole family implanted "after 9/11 because it would make them safer". I'm sure it did :-/

You can mock all you like, but how many times has a building that they were occupying had an aircraft crash into it since the implantation?

Re:Cancerous Police state much?

Maybe you're referring to this article [slashdot.org], which was discussed here several months ago.

Inert objects implanted into the body cause fibrous encapsulation, when the body's immune system covers the implant with fibrous and connective tissues. I'm sure you probably noticed that the implant in your pet was covered in tissue after they removed it. The problem is that scientists haven't determined whether it's the RF scanners, the RFID itself, or the presence of an inert implant that's causing the cancer (or at least I'm not aware of any evidence of it). Having said that, I would never implant myself with a foreign object.

Excessive?

I was always curious why futurists and cyborg fanboys get RFID chips implanted underneath their skin. What's wrong with just wearing one on a ring or perhaps a chain around your neck? Maybe both for multiple redundancy. Does it really happen THAT often you go to the pub for a few pints and comeback so drunk you've lost all your possessions? Does that slim probability warrant tagging yourself like cattle?

Answering the question posed

>>Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?>>

I can think of a number of reasons.

1. You can give your key to a trusted associate, for example to housesit or run an errand for you. Giving your arm to a trusted associate is computationally intensive, destructive, and irreversible.

2. You can, for the cost of less than one hour's salary, revoke the key tied to a compromised lock, and then issue a new key. If unforseen circumstances should cause the RFID lock to require revoking, well, bad news bears...

3. Key/lock devices are well understood, hardly ever fail due to them having few moving parts which are almost never in operation, and are robust against almost all unforseen environmental conditions (i.e. power outage). Arm/RFID reader interfaces are poorly understood, by necessity have to be polling constantly, and are dependent on several fragile systems to maintain the key requirements that you be let into your house promptly any time you desire and that unauthorized users be rejected 100% of the time.

4. You have designs of ever having a romantic relationship. ("Honey, I know preparations for the wedding have been a bit busy, but we'll have to schedule your surgery sometime this week...")

5. A diligent attacker attempting to compromise your lock/key interface has no reason to attempt to compromise your shoulder/arm interface with a hacksaw.

My friend has developed similar system

and were planning to sell it to China.

The system contains everything you could imagine: in-house tracking system, motion detectors, remote messaging control and web-interface administration, integration with all electronic household appliances for whatever control you could think of doing, including but not limited to gardening and feeding your dogs.

He even got VC supports to build the actual products; but then, I asked him one question: "what about power outage, which happen so frequently in China?"

He thought briefly and said "We could include an fuel-powered, emergency backup power supply for my system."

"Well, when there's a power outage, those house appliances cease to function as well..."

He then thought more deeply and said "Then we must kick in a bigger fuel-powered, emergency backup power supply for the entire house!"

He's now selling household fuel-powered emergency backup power supplies and really good at it.

Fire away wise guys

For all those who are about to make wisecracks about this dude, by all means go ahead.

Just pause for a moment and admit to yourself that you were thinking what language *you* would be scripting the curtains with.

Favor me with a short answer

My understanding of "RFID" tags is that since they are powered by the energy broadcast by the reader, the tags themselves can't do very much in terms of computation. As a result, they are limited to parroting back a static serial number (though a long one, or part of it) that's determined when the tag is manufactured.

This means that the tags themselves cannot do any encryption at all.

If this is the case, why the hell would anybody want to use it to gain secure access to anything when anybody nearby the tag with an RFID reader can read the serial number and spoof the tag?

This would be like writing your credit card number on the front of your shirt - //in infrared ink//. Sure, you'd need fancy infrared optics to read it - but why the hell would you take that chance?

Is my understanding flawed, here? Are there newer RFID tags that actually can do crypto (and are people like those in TFA using them)? I may be wrong in any number of ways, so I'm looking for some more solid info.

Re:Favor me with a short answer

Passive RFID chips can do some computation themselves, and many can do crypto, but it's extremely limited. For instance, the ubiquitous Mifare chips used for opening doors and even payment systems use proprietary crypto - and it's very broken [hackaday.com], anybody with very simple tools can listen in and copy the code.

Re:RFID?

How long until someone freaks out irrationally about it?

Re:RFID?

I've used the RFID kit [jaycar.com.au] he's installed on his front door before.

There is absolutely no encrypted handshake between the RFID tag and the reader. Hence an attacker could VERY easily conduct a replay attack using an easily duplicated tag. Given that the tag he uses is implanted into his arm, anyone that walks past him on the street could steal his front door key.

But I guess this isn't much of an issue for fellow geeks, because what sort of geek walks outside their basement and gets within the vicinity of other people in the first place?