Willem Velthoven

RFID Skimmer

Stealthy data collection made easy

We know that people carry RFID tags on their body, in their pockets and in their wallets. Many of these are in cards that have securely encrypted information on them. What we can recognise though, is the unique number of a card like that. Combining the number with the identity of the carrier and other numbers enables us to identify persons in many new ways!

Enlarge

RFID privacy NOT - Why geo-tag photos if we can people-tag them?

So what do we need to collect the numbers? We need the RFID-Skimmer app.

- Runs on a small laptop of maybe a phone.
- Connects to an RFID reader.
- Records sound and image from a hidden webcam.

Scenario: I have my reader conceiled in my sleeve. My cam somewhere else on my body. When I meet someone I'd like to skim, I just move close to the person and murmer apologies when I get too close. The apologies are handy to identify the person later. "Oh sorry mr. Cohen" later help me to combine some uuids with our mayor.

The app could constantly spool AV. As soon as a tag is detected, the AV from the previous 30 sec. is archived with the RFID number + timestamp. The archiving stops 30 secs after the detection of a tag.

This way I can easily skim lots of people in a crowd, say, at a Picnic event.