6 comments

[ 0.57 ms ] story [ 31.7 ms ] thread
Research by Kristin Paget and Marc Rogers shows that the RFID tagging used by branches of military to inventory weapons can be tracked at range.
For additional context most manufacturers state the longest you can read passive EPC Gen 2 tags is about 30 feet. We were able to build a device that allowed reads at over 200 feet and could have easily done more.

EPC Gen 2 was designed to be an efficient, cheap Tag for inventory management and not used in secure applications. Anywhere you see it being used for something secure - it can almost certainly be broken.

I’ll be releasing the specs for the platform we built at a talk soon, so that everyone can start pentesting EPC Gen 2 tags for cheap.

> at a talk soon

When/where?

What weapons use these????
Loads, you can find details by googling for “RFID weapons management” and so on. Everything from small arms & long guns to rockets and even airplanes.
A lot of interesting details about military logistics and bureaucracy:

> RFID offers a simpler, more efficient system. Which is why two airmen went to an Air Force 2020 Innovation Rodeo — an ideas competition patterned after the TV show “Shark Tank” — to pitch a project to a panel of senior officers.

> The airmen offered another scenario, one service members dread and that RFID promises to eliminate: A thousand troops suddenly need to deploy overseas, fast. To get the weapons they will carry, each must wait in a line that snakes around the building and barely seems to move.

> ...Open with “full operational capability,” the RFID armory is a success as promised, according to spokeswoman Jasmine Porterfield. The new system cuts inventory time in half, limiting the need for two armorers and creating more schedule flexibility and training opportunities.

The fact that Pentagon leaders don't even know that services are now tagging weapons is astounding:

> Policy experts within the Office of the Secretary of Defense appeared unaware that the services have been tagging firearms with RFID.