Proximity Cards – No Need to Swipe

Cards
that can be read from your pocket, without having to be swiped? Incredible
convienience, or an invitation to electronic pocket-picking? How long
til your student ID chip is implanted under your skin during your freshman
physical? Thank goodness this is at MIT, where no student
would dare to actually hack into an official network. No, I did NOT
order 6
cannisters
of
nitros oxide from Acme Welding Company!

MIT has begun to switch faculty and students from magnetic swipe identification
cards to "proximity" cards readable from a distance, but has yet to
address the security concerns with both the new system and the old
system as a whole.

Like the replacement of the student services card with the original,
multipurpose, magnetic-stripe MIT Card in the spring of 1994, the shift
to a new technology raises concerns over security and privacy.The possibility
of covertly reading and copying the cards, even as they rest in other
students’ pockets, remains a concern. Nobody has demonstrated
this, but nobody is prepared to say it is impossible or even particularly
difficult for MIT’s electrical engineering majors.

"Since [proximity cards] can be read at a distance, someone could set
up a bogus ID reader in Lobby 7 to scan ID’s as people pass," said Chris
T. Lesniewski-Laas G, who proposed a replacement for the MIT Card in
1999.

from the
MIT student newspaper