Chips for cloning



Two hackers, Annalee Newitz and Jonathan Westhues slapped VeriChip’s RFID chips at the HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) Number Six Conference in New York City this week. They proved how human-implantable RFID chips of VeriChip corporation could be easily cloned, successfully thieving the person’s identity.



As part of the demonstration, Newitz acted like a guinea pig, wearing a VeriChip RFID chip in her right arm. Westhues proceeded to clone the chip. At first, He scarlet Newitz’ arm with a standard RFID reader. He then scanned chip again with a homebrew antenna, which is connected to his laptop. The laptop recorded the radio signal of the chip. He implemented the same RFID reader to read the signal from his laptop that quickly produced Newtiz’s supposedly unique ID.





The revelation would put US-based chipmaker in neck deep trouble. VeriChip Corporation who for the long time is promoting that its chips are reliable for human tracking will find it difficult to get deal from Bush Administration to track immigrants and guest workers.









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