By Peter Weiss
A team of computer scientists has unraveled the codes of tiny radio devices that protect cars from theft and prevent fraudulent gasoline purchases.
The exercise in reverse engineering by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and RSA Laboratories in Bedford, Mass., shows that “an attacker with modest resources—just a few hundred dollars” of off-the-shelf equipment—can crack the codes of millions of car keys and the stubby wands that trigger the pumps at ExxonMobil gas stations, the team reports in a draft article posted Jan. 28 on the Internet (http://www.rfid-analysis.org/).