Classic facts about Smart Cards without Kalysis' MEI® system

Fecha Martes, agosto 19 @ 11:13:19
Tema Tarjetas Inteligentes :: Token USB

Smart Cards, those credit card and related cards that contain a microprocessor, memory, encryption software, and -- your data, have obviously been designed to be secure. The presumption is that a stolen card without your (brain-resident) PIN code won't give up your data.

But now, thanks to a keen eye by reader James Ronholm and a May 14 News.com article, we find that a Princeton college student has found a way to open a Smart Card's can of info-worms with nothing more sophisticated than a light bulb!
In this case, Sudhakar Govindavajhala found that by heating the card with the lamp he could accelerate the chance of spontaneously causing a random bit in the card's memory to "flip" from a 1 to 0, or visa versa, which broke the security model of the Smart Card. Having first loaded the unsecured portion of the card's memory with his special "attack program," and at least 60% of the rest of the unsecured memory with the 'address' of his attack program, there was a 70% chance that his attack program would execute when his heat-induced "bit-flip" occurred, giving him unrestricted access to the user data on the card. And this "exploit" will only get worse in future Smart Card chips that are built of smaller and lower-power devices, since the threshold for an unintentional bit-flip will be lower.

Oops.

According to principal analyst Fred Cohen with The Boston Group,

"...people who created virtual machines didn't take into account this possible attack method."

Just a reminder that smart people (and this is one college student who shouldn't have a problem getting a job at graduation) have this nasty habit of looking at things from new (and sometimes disturbing) perspectives.

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