RFID, and what you should know about it.

While this subject is not really recent news, it has been revisited recently due to the cancellation of an episode of the popular television series, MythBusters. The MythBusters wanted to show how easy it was to get the credentials from one of these RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) credit cards with simple items that anyone could obtain. When the crew was called called in by the top legal consultants of every major credit card company, the episode was quickly pulled by the Discovery Channel in order to keep their advertisers happy. But why is this such a touchy subject?

Upon conducting a Google search on "how to hack RFID credit cards," there are plenty of sites that basically give you a step by step list on what you need and how to do it. Anyone with one of these cards should shudder at this, but there are some measures that credit card companies have implemented to battle this. There are authorization methods that generate a transaction number that is only good for a very small amount of time. In other words, if someone were to scan your card and extract the information, he/she would have to use that information gathered almost immediately or it would result in a fraudulent transaction. Another measure is the distance needed to pull the information is usually very small, from one to three inches. So, while the thieves may have your information, you'll quickly receive a phone call from your credit company when they try to use it. There are even wallets with integrated Faraday cages woven into the material to block these hijacks. While these may seem to be workarounds to a very serious problem, it does significantly decrease the chances of losing all of your hard earned cash.

RFID is not going anywhere soon. There are mobile devices that are acting as credit cards at this very moment. The latest android development phone, the Galaxy Nexus, comes equipped with a NFC battery cover (Near Field Communication), which is an extension of RFID technology. This allows users to carry all of their money in one place. While this has it's own security issues, it just proves that this wireless technology is the current direction of consumers.