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| (US) 9/06 - Physical access required?... |
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| Author |
Message |
    
Patricia Tavormina
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Patty
Post Number: 49
Registered: 04-2005
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, September 17, 2006 - 4:17 pm: | 
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What with so many devices these days being able to detect signals that are not in physical cntact with the device, is it at all possible that memory cards actually could be modified by someone without them breaking the security seal? I'm envisioning someone just standing close enough to the machine to allow a wireless signal to tell the card something new.
Could this be done? |
Dan Oetting
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Dan_oetting
Post Number: 148
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, September 17, 2006 - 9:18 pm: |
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If you are talking about designing a card with these capabilities, it's almost trivial. You only need to look at existing examples like proxy cards or RFID.
Reading signals from a standard memory card could even be possible. Every signal trace of the circuit card acts like a tiny antenna broadcasting the data that it carries. Circuits are generally designed to minimize these signals and secure smart cards are shielded and even tested to insure these signals are inaccessible.
Now, you are talking about modifying the contents of the card. There are two possible ways to accomplish this task. You could induce a signal on the circuit traces and try to override the signal that is supposed to be there. This may be possible. But at the same time there are near by signal traces that would need to have different data injected. Unfortunately, there are physical limitations having to do with wavelength and resolution that get in the way of being able to do this.
Anther possibility is to use high energy particles to alter the memory on the card. The limitation here is that it currently takes a particle accelerator as big as a room and we can't control the positioning anywhere near accurately enough to target an individual memory cell.
Could this be done?
If you want only to destroy the data on the card, maybe. If you want to change the data on the card without detection, no. |
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