Is Your Cat Infected with a Computer Virus

Short Description
tainer’s RFID tag is infected with a computer virus. This. particular RFID virus uses SQL injection to attack the back-. end RFID middleware systems. …

Website: www.rfidvirus.org | Filesize: 194kb

Content
Is Your Cat Infected with a Computer Virus?
Melanie R. Rieback Bruno Crispo Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Computer Systems Group
De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands
fmelanie,crispo,astg@cs.vu.nl
Abstract
RFID systems as a whole are often treated with suspicion,
but the input data received from individual RFID tags
is implicitly trusted. RFID attacks are currently conceived
as properly formatted but fake RFID data; however no one
expects an RFID tag to send a SQL injection attack or a
buffer overow. This paper is meant to serve as a warning
that data from RFID tags can be used to exploit back-end
software systems. RFID middleware writers must therefore
build appropriate checks (bounds checking, special character
ltering, etc..), to prevent RFID middleware from suffering
all of the well-known vulnerabilities experienced by
the Internet. Furthermore, as a proof of concept, this paper
presents the rst self-replicating RFID virus. This virus
uses RFID tags as a vector to compromise backend RFID
middleware systems, via a SQL injection attack.
1. Introduction
Years after the successful introduction of RFID-based
pet tagging, Seth the veterinarian’s pet identi…