Is Your Pet Infected with A Computer Virus

Digital plague

These chips may be small, but just one infected RFID tag is capable of disrupting an entire system with disastrous consequences. Take, for example, the airport at Las Vegas, which handles two million items of luggage per month. As from May 2006, RFID tags will be attached to cases to speed up the baggage handling process. If someone intentionally attaches an infected RFID tag to his case, the entire system will be thrown into disarray. As soon as the case is scanned, the infected tag will be able to invade the airport’s central baggage database and all cases subsequently checked in will also become infected. On arrival at other airports, these cases will be scanned again and within 24 hours, hundreds of airports throughout the world could be infected. The perfect solution for smugglers and terrorists wanting to send suspicious luggage across the world without being noticed.

Countermeasures
Fortunately, the threat of infection can be countered using standard measures. Rieback stresses that developers must check their RFID systems, and implement safety procedures and secure programme technology. Although these countermeasures will curb the threat posed by RFID viruses, extra time, money and effort will need to be spent on implementing them. It is therefore imperative that RFID system developers and users check the security of their systems now, before they are put to large-scale use.

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