New research from the USA has claimed that radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is not as secure as previously thought.
University of Virginia student Karsen Nohl and others presented their findings to a conference in December, but the implications of their work – in which they claim to have cracked the cryptographic algorithms in smart cards used by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) – have only recently been picked up by local media.
The RFID tag employed in MBTA's subway CharlieCards is manufactured by NXP Semiconductors and is known as the Mifare Classic.
The researchers have not released the detail behind their claims for fear that others might copy them, but NXP insists that only a part of the encryption on the chip has been compromised.
"You can't consider the RFID world separate from the world of computers anymore, as manufacturers have in the past," Mr Nohl warned.
"People have and will, as we have, taken security expertise from the world of computers and applied it to RFIDs, whose designers had been operating under the assumption that their world was apart from such scrutiny."
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