Renowned cryptographer Adi Shamir from Weizmann University has found out a method to bypass the encryption scheme and obtain the self destruct password using technology which is no more sophisticated than the one in a common mobile phone. Adi revealed his findings at the 2006 RSA Conference. He told that he brought a major brand RFid tag and tried to break into it by power analysis. Since RFid tags have no battery or internal power source, they obtain the energy from radio signals they absorb, Adi and his team used a simple directional antenna to monitor the power consumption of an RFid tag as they transmitted correct and incorrect passwords to the device slowly one at a time. The team was quickly able to crack the password. If this claim is proven it could raise innumerable security questions



via [Sciam]