I had a chance to review two books on RFID recently - The Spychips Threat and RFID Essentials. Each took on the issue of RFID security differently.
Now, it turns out that the greater threat (at least immediately) isn't to the individual, but to the business, because that's where the money is.
Best hack:
Lacking their own power source, the chips are also susceptible to so-called power-consumption hacks. Adi Shamir, a professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute of Science, announced in February that he and a student researcher were able to hack into an RFID tag and extract its kill password, which is a code that effectively makes the tag self-destruct.The researchers deduced the password by monitoring the tag's power consumption. (It turns out, the tag's power consumption rises when it receives incorrect data from the reader). The researchers uncovered the tag's kill code in three hours. While that tag was dated, more recent iterations, which came on the market in the second half of 2005, could react in similar ways, the researcher says. And a tag can be hacked with a tool as simple as a cell phone.
Let's see. Port security. Ubiquitous RFID tags on cargo containers. Viruses. I think I see the outlines of next year's 24 story arc starting to take shape...
