[IP] Keys and keys

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: John Schwartz <jswatz@nytimes.com>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 14:28:39 -0500
To: <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Keys and keys



Hi, Dave -- I thought IP readers might be interested in this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/national/29key.html

Graduate Cryptographers Unlock Code of 'Thiefproof' Car Key
  
Published: January 29, 2005

BALTIMORE - Matthew Green starts his 2005 Ford Escape with a duplicate key
he had made at Lowe's. Nothing unusual about that, except that the
automobile industry has spent millions of dollars to keep him from being
able to do it.

 Mr. Green, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, is part of a
team that plans to announce on Jan. 29 that it has cracked the security
behind "immobilizer" systems from Texas Instruments Inc. The systems reduce
car theft, because vehicles will not start unless the system recognizes a
tiny chip in the authorized key. They are used in millions of Fords, Toyotas
and Nissans.

 All that would be required to steal a car, the researchers said, is a
moment next to the car owner to extract data from the key, less than an hour
of computing, and a few minutes to break in, feed the key code to the car
and hot-wire it.

An executive with the Texas Instruments division that makes the systems did
not dispute that the Hopkins team had cracked its code, but said there was
much more to stealing a car than that. The devices, said the executive, Tony
Sabetti, "have been fraud-free and are likely to remain fraud-free."

 The implications of the Hopkins finding go beyond stealing cars.

 Variations on the technology used in the chips, known as RFID for radio
frequency identification, are widely used....






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