CC Companies Scotch Mythbusters Show On RFID Security 466
mathfeel passes along a video in which Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage recounts how credit card companies lawyered up to make sure the Discovery channel never, ever airs a segment on the flaws in RFID security. "Texas Instruments comes on [a scheduled conference call] along with chief legal counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else... They [Mythbusters producers] were way, way outgunned and they [lawyers] absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was, and Discovery backed way down being a large corporation that depends upon the revenue of the advertisers. Now it's on Discovery's radar and they won't let us go near it."
Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only a matter of time before this gets pulled off Youtube.
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
On what grounds would it be pulled off of YouTube? This is the very essence of what YouTube committed to deliver: a medium for user-produced video content. I don't see how Adam Savage could complain - he was speaking to a room full of people, any of whom could have a cel phone, or a video camera, recording him. Same with the venue and event producer - they let him in with a camera. Unless the clip was posted by someone other than the copyright holder, I don't see any way it could be "legitimately" removed.
As for illegitimate methods, is Visa, or any of the other cc companies, a big enough customer for Google that they would risk the possible backlash and negative publicity to pull it? Besides, it's been seen now by lot's of people. No way to undo that.
I loved it when the guy in the audience said "you do have about 3000 people in the room are aren't under any such legal arrangements." That's the point, right there.
Once again, the corporate culture uses lawyers to focus attention on themselves by trying to silence people who simply speak the truth. They make it so easy. It's like catching fish in a barrel.
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
On what grounds would it be pulled off of YouTube?
Grounds? Youtube takes down anything whenever *anyone* sends something that vaguely (really) resembles a proper DMCA takedown notice.
Safe legal ground, but they're starting to piss off a subset of their users who expect the creators of a community to put up a modicum of defense for said community.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
YouTube is required by law to take down content when someone files a DMCA takedown notice, and put it back up after 14 days if the person who uploaded it files an uncontested counter notice. I believe that is what happened when the IOC mistakenly filed a notice against some video footage titled "Olympic Opening Ceremony" or something, which turned out to be footage of people protesting outside the Chinese embassy in New York.
They believed, due to the title, that it was their copyrighted material. When it turned out it was simply mislabeled, the footage was restored.
Well, you said it yourself. If YouTube wants to remain within the safe harbour offered by the DMCA to online service providers, they pretty much have to follow that procedure. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in business very long.
Besides, it's the users who would create any kind of "community" that would exist around YouTube, by creating and uploading original content, as the person who uploaded the video we are discussing did. If all you are doing is uploading copyright material that doesn't belong to you, there's not much YouTube can do to defend you.
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
YouTube is required by law to take down content when someone files a DMCA takedown notice
Incorrect.
The DMCA says YouTube gets a free pass against any claims of infringement and any lawsuit from the party filing the DMCA notice.
and put it back up after 14 days if the person who uploaded it files an uncontested counter notice.
Incorrect.
The DMCA says YouTube gets a free pass against any claims of harm or wrong doing in taking down the content.
In practice virtually every company institutes automatic rules of obeying takedown notices and counter notices, no matter how blatantly bogus they may be. If the Olympic Committee, or Scientologists, or Barbra Streisand, or anyone else files DMCA notices demanding the takedown of content which is not in fact infringing, or for any other reason the service provider would not have been guilty under pre-DMCA law for leaving up, then that provider absolutely can choose to safely leave that content up. And equally, if under pre-DMCA law a company would not have been liable for taking certain content down, they can safely ignore a counter notice and can keep content down.
One could, for example, send in a totally bogus takedown notice against a group organizing an event on a certain date, or against a business engaging in some time-critical dealings, or even against say a politician running for office. Virtually every internet business will follow a strict policy on taking down anything on a DMCA notice, no matter how blatantly bogus it is. The arrangement of law and business interests makes that almost almost impossible to escape. The DMCA makes it trivial to arbitrarily censor almost anything anyone dislikes and to bully people into submission, and to abusively achieve complete victory in any time-sensitive situation. I recall one case where stores were unhappy with their holiday sale prices being posted online. So they filed a totally bogus takedown notice claiming the sale prices as copyright infringement, and had the information taken down. And obviously a counter-notice to have that content restored several days later - after the holiday sale was over - would have been completely pointless. But imagine if one were to take advantage of this DMCA situation for political ends. A situation that is obviously quite date-critical and where counter-noticing a takedown does not solve or even diminish the damage caused by that takedown. One could anonymously send totally bogus takedown notices by e-mail or snail-mail screwing either candidate (even screwing both). Not only could you takedown selected videos from YouTube just before an election, not only can you have various crucial materials taken down from various websites, one could potentially even get a candidate's own website taken down.
Maybe in the described political campaign situation a company might override the strict corporate rule to comply with all DMCA notices, however that is a total crap-shoot and the law makes it against the company's interest to do so. Legally, the corporate interest is to just obey the bogus notice.
If all you are doing is uploading copyright material that doesn't belong to you, there's not much YouTube can do to defend you.
If you are uploading legitimate material and someone is sending junk DMCA notices, YouTube could ignore the junk notices, could defend you, but legally it is powerfully against their interests to do so. Legally, it would be stupid for them to do so.
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Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
You just pointed out one of the serious flaws with the DMCA, that any company, or any person, can file a barrage of illegitimate takedown notices with little or no consequence. Which still does not represent a flaw with Google, but rather with with the law.
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm, I wonder if YouTube would change their tune if they started receiving DMCA takedown notices on every video ever posted...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:4, Funny)
Cucumbers listed as birth control at the counter would be the least of our problems.
It sounds like a kinky, but certainly effective, form of birth control to me.
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Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
"It's only a matter of time before this gets pulled off Youtube."
Save a copy to repost or post elsewhere.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006 [mozilla.org]
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, we all know how well censorship works on the internet.
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like they're covering up something big, they just want to ban talk about it altogether.
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You do realize that that very clip was in TFA? Not even linked, but embedded so all you had to do was click on play?
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:4, Funny)
But who would see it?
Its better to post links here than in the article no one reads.
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:4, Funny)
But who would see it?
Its better to post links here than in the article no one reads.
Great. Now we're gonna have WTFV.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like it's time for a grassroots movement by us:
Perhaps, only perhaps, the hard part will be communicating this problem succinctly.
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Visa?
Mastercard?
Discover?
These are companies that you can not avoid, and can not fight. No one who wants to function can boycott them, and without SERIOUS fallout no lawmaker can touch them.
Not to mention the public is surprsingly accepting of 'it should be illegal to show how bad a product is!'
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably have done. Probably were anticipated by the companies to be going to do.
The thing about credit cards is that they have never been very secure. They just have a business model that can absorb a fairly substantial slice of fraud. True, the companies don't like fraud, and they take steps to reduce it, but they don't spend more than a dollar to save a dollar of fraud.
Having a fraud tolerant business model is way more important than having a fraud tolerant credit card. The only thing is that credit card marketing is based on getting consumers to rely on their cards, to trust the cards and the company behind them.
Re:Delaying the inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
The signature is not a security feature. Unless you want to train tens of millions of clerks in precision handwriting analysis techniques.
It's merely a token of accession to contract terms. Having people write, "yes" would be just as effective.
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It's funny, though, because at one time it was at least sort of presented that way. When I worked horrible retail jobs 10-15 years ago, we were always instructed to hold the card and compare the signatures. Never once was I told what to look for to match th
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I had a friend once that put "I'm not tipping you" on his. If a clerk doesn't mention it, they don't get anything written on the tip line of the receipt.
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I draw smiley faces or less G rated things on the digital signature pads in stores :).
Re:Already done (Score:4, Interesting)
A few inches? I was hoping to see Adam and Jamie with a parabolic antenna reading people's CC tokens from a couple of blocks. No, seriously. RFID security ranks right up there with Congressional oversight in the list of the top oxymorons of all time... okay, not all RFID hardware---some actually do use crypto in the right way---but a large enough percentage that my level of trust for RFID CCs is somewhere between zero and negative infinity.
I kind of wish someone would record (and post on YouTube et al) a MythBusters parody in which they act like Adam and Jamie et al and do an RFID shootout to see who can assemble the best RFID remote reader rig. Score the contest on accuracy, on ability to distinguish multiple cards, on range, and if they are really feeling lucky, on whether they were able to successfully make a purchase using the skimmed data with the opponent's credit card.... :-)
I doubt I'm going to see that any time soon, but it would be fun to watch the inevitable train wreck in a couple of CC companies' stock as they scrambled to dismantle those systems and come up with a more secure means of payment....
Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:5, Funny)
I can't wait until they test my myths! Also, lawyers are the reason we no longer have habeas corpus, so the show should be filmed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this would be a good time to point out that Barack Obama and his running mate are lawyers.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The fact is that the law is sufficiently complicated that a law degree is of substantial benefit to people who don't actively practice law. I won't take a position on whether this is a result of the inherent complexity in high-stakes rules, or whether it is deliberate obfuscation by lawyers.
Additionally, there's a difference between types of lawyers. The lawyers that people generally look down on (and are probably most common) are d
Re:mod parent down (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe the law should be open source (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:5, Funny)
I like how this is modded informative..
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Slashdot Moderation System working at its finest. Truly, a day to be proud, CmdrTaco.
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you were alive during the days that they just burned scientists and heretics at the stake, I am impressed. Perhaps you just mean that you yearn for the days? (this is probably a pretty narrow style issue, but whatever)
If you really care, stop doing business with them. Stop doing business with the various financial companies because they would manipulate what is presented to you. Stop doing business with Discovery because they put profit before whatever-it-is. Stop doing business with people who do business with them. I mean, you don't actually have to sit through the bullshit if you don't want to, but damn if it isn't easier.
What it comes down to is that if you don't stand up for a principle, you don't really have much business expecting anybody else to...
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:5, Informative)
The credit/currency corporations are the key to being "in the system" and if you are "out of the system" you will be homeless or in government housing in short order. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it is an unfortunate reality. Perhaps you could lead a bank and credit card free life dealing only in Ithica Hours. [ithacahours.org] But freedom from the financial corporate overlords is rare and hard won. Those overlords like RFID, so you will have RFID.
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:5, Funny)
Lawyers can smell profit and always pick the correct door in the Monty Hall situation when IEDs lay on the other side of two and $1,000 lays on the other side of one.
The correct door is of course one with an IED behind, they can sue for waaay more than $1000 for the trauma of getting blown up.
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:5, Funny)
Lawyers can smell profit and always pick the correct door in the Monty Hall situation when IEDs lay on the other side of two and $1,000 lays on the other side of one.
The correct door is of course one with an IED behind, they can sue for waaay more than $1000 for the trauma of getting blown up.
That's lawyer talk! You're one of them!
GET HIM!
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, lawyers are the reason we no longer have habeas corpus, so the show should be filmed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Lawyers are also the only reason you ever had habeas corpus in the first place, and the only chance you have of ever getting it back.
Lawyers are like nuclear tech, they can be used for good or evil.
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:4, Funny)
Lawyers are like geeks, except they hack laws instead of code
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:4, Funny)
Without the restraint that it must be syntactically correct and compile! The fact that it doesn't 'compile' can generate work for another lawyer who discovers the errors.
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not been lost? Tell it to those in Guantanamo Bay, or those held without legal consul, notification to their families, or admissions of their presence in this and similar facilities. Since their names are secret, and even admitting that you know the names can get you thrown in jail as a security risk, that's about as serious a violation of habeas corpus as you can commit. It's also a major violation of the Geneva Convention.
So the principal is, in fact, in danger.
Re:Upcoming Mythbusters Special! (Score:4, Funny)
Any lawyer can outrun a male grizzly bear in the middle of mating season.
I didn't know lawyers had a mating season! I guess I always assumed they were created in liquid-filled vats somewhere in Canada...
Also... what do the lawyers do when the catch up to the bear?
In other words: (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Next on Mythbusters... (Score:5, Funny)
With the accompanying /. title: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:With the accompanying /. title: (Score:4, Funny)
Better that than "CC Companies French Mythbusters Show On Security".
This isn't about the hackers... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't at all about the hackers ... this is about making the general public aware just how bad this is.
Re:This isn't about the hackers... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't at all about the hackers ... this is about making the general public aware just how bad this is.
But as the reasoning goes...
If the general public isn't aware of the problem...
It isn't a problem.
Unfortunately, it's true to a point (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially when it comes to things that might be used for criminal ends. Reason is, most criminals aren't all that smart. Especially small time criminals. To the extent there are smart criminals, they are usually the ones on top, the drug lords and such. The small time criminals usually aren't the sort of people who do research or think things through. You can see this in things like copper theft. This really is not a very profitable mode of operation. Even with the price having doubled, copper prices are still talked about in single digit dollars per POUND. That's also the price you'd pay on a mercantile exchange, not the price a scrap dealer gives you. Thus it is dangerous (both in terms of getting arrested and risking death if the wires happen to be live), a good bit of work, and probably doesn't pay any better than a job at McDonalds.
The point I'm getting at is that the large amount of petty, opportunity type criminals go for things their attention has been brought to. Copper prices skyrocketing made news so their attention got brought to it. They didn't realize that while the prices did double that was from about $2/lb to $4/lb.
Now as related to RFID, well Mythbusters certainly could lead to slightly more sophisticated petty criminals trying it. Right now, there's little information out there on it. So you'd be talking doing a good deal of research, perhaps some of it original, to build a device that could nab card numbers. This assumes that they've even had it brought to their attention that such a ting can be done. If they don't read a site like Slashdot, chances are they don't know it has security issues, and perhaps aren't even aware it exists at all.
However if Mythbusters calls attention to it, and shows a basic guide of how to exploit it, well then they might start trying.
Now I'm not saying that this means the problem shouldn't get fixed, or that it is Mythbusters job to keep it under wraps. I am saying that there really is some merit to the idea that if the public isn't aware of the problem it's not a problem. Sure there are people out there who are both aware it is a problem and know enough to exploit it. Perhaps you are one of them. However, are you going to actually do it? No? Then no problem.
I'm not saying this is the right way to approach the security of this issue, I am just saying that there is real merit to the idea that if the public doesn't know then it's not a problem. You probably meant that it would be happening but they'd be kept in the dark about it. No, not at all. What I mean is that if the public doesn't know about it, people won't try to exploit it.
I can just see the courtroom in 2010 (Score:5, Interesting)
"So, if I Understand this correctly, you knew of these security holes back in 2008, and rather than fix them, you prevented the Mythbusters from talking about them."
"Well, yes, Your Honor."
"Give me another reason why I should listen to one word of your defense against this class action suit?"
This will come back and bite them in the @$$. Hard.
You have alot of faith in judges. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't. They tend to be old, out of touch with modern technology. I think enough BS by CC lawyers would confound them and justice would not be served.
But I'm told I'm a cynic :)
Re:I can just see the courtroom in 2010 (Score:5, Insightful)
Judges are lawyers and that is forced by law. You can't be one without being a lawyer.
Re:I can just see the courtroom in 2010 (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I can just see the courtroom in 2010 (Score:5, Interesting)
"Well, Your Honor, all of the persons the plaintiff has named as members of the class are invalid. All our cardmembers, as a provision of the cardmember agreement, must refer to independent Binding Arbitration, and expressly waive their right to participate in a class action. And all those that remain have no standing to file this action."
When you enter a courtroom, you enter another world where such flagrant absurdities are taken seriously. Read your cardmember agreement. Then read Kafka.
Schwab
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I believe that a fairly recent ruling against a cell phone company would invalidate this clause of the contract by the precedence it set. I don't fully recall the details (and please, someone post links if you have them), but one of the large cell phone companies got the "binding arbitration" clause of their contract struck do
Re:I can just see the courtroom in 2010 (Score:4, Informative)
requiring binding arbitration as part of a "take it or leave it" agreement has already been ruled unconscionable.
Sorry, but the credit card companies won't escape on that one assuming the plaintiffs have any competence at all.
Re:I can just see the courtroom in 2010 (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you know the credit card companies aren't trying to fix the issue? And why not also blame the Discovery Channel, who didn't even try to put up a defense?
I think this comes down to "we advertise on your network and don't want you making us look bad" instead of "we are trying to keep this flaw a secret, even though it is already common knowledge."
http://www.rfid-cusp.org/blog/blog-23-10-2006.html [rfid-cusp.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How do you know the credit card companies aren't trying to fix the issue?
Because they continue to deploy RFID tech that is known to have security flaws.
And why not also blame the Discovery Channel, who didn't even try to put up a defense?
Because Discovery is first & foremost a business and without their advertisers, they are nothing.
Re:I can just see the courtroom in 2010 (Score:5, Funny)
Your honour we are rich smooth talking businessmen, the claimants are poor people, the defence rests.
Judge: I rule in favour of the defence.
Re:I can just see the courtroom in 2010 (Score:5, Funny)
This reminds me of something...
Judge Hank "The Hangman" BMW: Now prosecutor, why you think he done it?
Prosecutor: 'Kay. Number one your honor, just look at him. And B, we've got all this, like, evidence, of how, like, this guy didn't even pay at the hospital. And I heard that he doesn't even have his tattoo.
[crowd boos]
Prosecutor: I know! And I'm all, 'you've gotta be shittin' me!' But check this out man, judge should be like
[bangs fist on table]
Prosecutor: 'guilty!' Peace.
Pass the buck (Score:5, Insightful)
So, rather than face lawsuits over contractual obligations to build and maintain a secure system (hah), they litigate the party who exposes them for attempting fraud.
Should it be surprising that in a culture that prizes profits and pride over progress, that litigation threats are used to squelch otherwise good feedback and information?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I think that this kind of thing should be allowable, under one condition. Namely, that the credit card companies set about fixing this problem as quickly as possible, sparing no expense. If there is a big problem with these cards and they are willing to fix it now that someone has told them about it, I think it would only be reasonable to allow them to keep the information secret for a short time while they square things away.
Now, of course, the odds that this is what they'll actually do are only
I smell a Streisand Effect coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, now that the story is propagating all over the Net, pretty soon everyone will know about the alleged security flaws (if not the details), and the CC companies and their legal eagles will look quite villainous. When will they ever learn?
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They busted yet another myth..... (Score:5, Insightful)
freedom of speech.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It kind of dilutes the right of free speech when it is used where it doesn't apply.
Yeah, well... (Score:5, Informative)
They weren't able to stop this one [pbs.org], which, if you haven't seen yet, is pretty amazing.
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because PBS isn't advertiser funded, it gets its support from private individuals and (to a rather minor extent) the government. While corporations can (and do) donate, it isn't their lifeblood.
I agree with you though. I've seen that episode and it's a fantastic rebuke of the credit card industry.
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that but (Score:5, Insightful)
PBS was fucked, too (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember bill moyers and his 'now' show. it was great, and he had this other guy (david b-something) as a second - and it did some good 'digging' on important stories.
from what I understand, he got shot down and was forced to 'retire' because he asked too many hard questions and bothered too many powerful bigwigs.
he did come back, but not on that show and he *was* put 'out of business' for about a year or two (iirc). ie, the chilling effect was done to PBS, which is a sacred cow, in US culture (more or less).
if moyers can be silenced, its proof our whole system is broken. PBS was a final hold-out but even PBS was *heavily* edited by bush-co and their henchmen.
TV is a wasteland; cable is mostly such; and even more and more of 'the net' is getting to be high in noise/signal ratio. the net is still mostly unregulated, but imagine the trend going from tv->cable->'teh internets'. we may see it in our lifetimes, too, if things don't get reversed soon.
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why you get programmes like Top Gear from the BBC. No commercial channel would dare upset the card manufacturers like it does.
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:5, Interesting)
You'll feel sick reading/watching Fox, or even CNN etc, after reading/watching BBC.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That all sounds nice in theory. However, the People's Democratic Republic of (formerly Great) Br
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:4, Funny)
The average public couldn't spell PBS...
corporate games (Score:5, Interesting)
I know the management of these companies have obligations to the shareholders but isn't about time they started to exhibit an obligation to not make fraud so easy with the current system?
If ever there was a time... (Score:4, Insightful)
...for Slashdot to hammer the crap out of some corporate bullies, it sounds like this might be it. Could someone appropriately knowledgeable perhaps post a detailed account of how incredibly hackable RFID security is? A couple of URL's leading to websites with all the red meat would also be appropriate. PGP proves that once the genii is out of the bottle, it can't be put back in all that easily.
Frankly, I'm sick and tired of all these corporate assholes and their attitude. You can bet your bottom dollar that they'll keep the current, flawed system as-is, and simply out-last any hacking victim who dares to challenge them in court. The best solution is to make sure everybody with even a grade school education and a card reader can screw them at will. Maybe then, they'll do something about fixing the problem.
Likely MIFARE? (Score:4, Informative)
I assume they were going to demonstrate a MIFARE classic [wikipedia.org] attack, on which papers [avoine.net] are plentiful.
Or DTS (Score:3, Informative)
Or given that TI is mentioned, maybe it's more likely to be about Rubin et.al's attack on TI's Digital Signature Transponder. See Security Analysis of a Cryptographically-Enabled RFID Device [usenix.org] (paper) and/or article [infoworld.com].
Ignore Them (Score:4, Interesting)
An expensive lawsuit would almost certainly be filed after the fact, but it stands no chance of success. Discovery could counter-sue for barratry and violations of anti-SLAPP statutes.
Schwab
Re:Ignore Them (Score:5, Insightful)
There is also no law that requires the credit card companies to spend their advertising dollars on the Discovery Channel, or any other media outlet owned by the same company. That's what this is all about.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except where National Security(TM) is concerned, there is no valid argument in law to prevent Discovery/Mythbusters from airing facts about the lack of security surrounding RFID, and Discovery/Mythbusters are under no contractual obligation to keep such facts secret.
Schwab
There is more at work here than the law. The implicit (explicit?) threat is that if Discovery airs this show, the CC companies will cease advertising on the Discovery network.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You missed the valid argument of the CC companies paying the bills. The CC companies aren't forced to advertise on Discovery, but Discovery IS forced, by virtue of having bills to pay, to seek advertising revenue from the CC companies.
This is one of the major flaws in most libertarian and anarchist theories: government has no monopoly on tyranny or injustice.
Want to really get em? (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't just credit cards (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a nice thought.
RFID info (Score:5, Informative)
Good job (Score:3, Funny)
Just to be safe they should keep this episode locked away in a secure vault out in the middle of nowhere guarded by a lock which requires two RFID keys to open so that it will never see the light of day.
Ancient secrets. (Score:5, Informative)
"Texas Instruments comes on [a scheduled conference call] along with chief legal counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else... "
After discovering a flaw in one of Texas Instruments' RFID tags, researchers from RSA Labs and Johns Hopkins University say they plan to continue their testing with exploits against other RFID equipment. [cioinsight.com]
Doesn't look like the secret everyone thinks it is. Note the date. And this just from a few seconds with Google.
Biometrics Epsiode (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how much of this is in response to that episode they did a while back on security systems and showed how easily they could be gotten around (most notably the trivial to subert finger print scanner).
After making those companies look like liers and fools, I can imagine that the credit card companies would not want to risk the bad press too.
News from the future! (Score:5, Funny)
Wildly popular Mythbusters television star Adam Savage resigned suddenly from his position as cohost of Discovery TV's Mythbusters. Said Mr. Savage: "I just want to take a little personal time with my family. I'll be taking some time out for a year or four in Belize."
Mr. Savage has not been seen since, and our repeated calls to his agent go unanswered.
The Discovery Channel has announced through media representative Linsay Patter "We'll miss him and wish him the best. His loss means we won't be able to continue with the show." Discovery will be filling the space with Annie Parkinson's "Crafts for Children".
Re:News from the future! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, *somebody* has to think of the children.
Re:Sometimes it neccesary (Score:5, Interesting)
Bad analogy time:
It's like a ship with holes in it. If the ship is already at sea, you shut up and man the pumps. But if the ship is in the dock, you yell "Look, hole!" and hopefully you wont have to pump quite as much later on.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sometimes it neccesary (Score:5, Insightful)
And you are the only person that will figure that method out, I guess. Hopefully, you are the smartest person alive, and the problem so difficult no one else can possibly figure it out too, and abuse it.
The way we move forward as a race is that we share information, both about what works and helps, and more importantly about what doesn't work or causes harm. If the people affected the most by the flaw that has been discovered do nothing about it, then disclosure is the way. That way everyone else is informed and warned, as they should be.
Re:99% chance (Score:5, Funny)
That this clip is leaked to the Internet where it explodes in popularity.
The Discovery Channel should make sure that the media the episode is stored on is secured by means of RFID security devices to ensure that it is not stolen and leaked.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is no need. A few detailed videos, posted on PirateBay and Wikileaks by people who can do a decent job from a country where the DMCA does not apply, would do quite well to publish. Why spend all the money?
We already saw this with US passports, where the details on how to read the RFID tag is already available with a bit of Google searching. It's happening with subway passes in US cities such as Boston, which tried to prevent some hackers from presenting their paper at Defcon.