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This story is from the category Sensors
Date posted: 12/03/2010 A company that relies on atomic-level flaws in computer chips to tell one chip from another says that its circuits could help fight counterfeiting in anything from passports to handbags. Verayo, an MIT spinoff based in San Jose, CA, says the ID tags should be more secure and relatively cheap to make. A growing number of organizations, from the U.S. State Department to Walmart, rely on radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to keep track of various items. RFID chips in crates of DVDs tell Walmart where their shipment is and when it's been delivered. And the tags in newer passports contain the same information printed on the page, in an encrypted format, so immigrations officials can tell the passport isn't a forgery. But because these tags deliver their information to a reader via radio waves, there's always the fear that someone will eavesdrop on the conversation and copy the data to their own chip, just moving forgery to a different level. Cryptography helps prevent the copying, but adding the cryptographic circuits to the chips drives up their costs, so many RFID tags don't include them. For RFID to be widely used--on individual products, say, instead of just on shipping crates--they can't cost more than pennies. The security of Verayo's chips relies on the fact that no two chips are exactly alike. The components of a computer circuit are measured in billionths of a meter. So a stray atom here or there during manufacturing can cause a wire to turn out slightly thicker or thinner than the specs call for. That leads to miniscule variations in how fast the circuit works, and there's nothing that can be done to prevent it. See the full Story via external site: www.technologyreview.com Most recent stories in this category (Sensors): 01/05/2013: Breath study brings roadside drug testing closer |
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