Homemade RFID tag zapper

Radio frequency IDs (RFIDs), small electronic chips that share information when scanned, are rapidly becoming an essential part of global supply management. In order to correctly route and track items from inception to purchase, these chips are attached to packaging and increasingly the products themselves.

The intentional disabling of these chips can cause supply chain disruption. The best method is to HERF (high energy radio frequency, usually microwaves) the chips using a small transmitter (read about high power home made microwave weapons for herfing). The German branch (privacy activists) of the global guerrilla innovation network has developed a simple solution that converts a standard film camera into a short range RFID zapper. This system:

"...copies the microwave-oven-method, but in a much smaller scale. It generates a strong electromagnetic field with a coil, which should be placed as near to the target-RFID-Tag as possible. The RFID-Tag then will recive a strong shock of energy comparable with an EMP and some part of it will blow, most likely the capacitator, thus deactivating the chip forever.

To keep the costs of the RFID-Zapper as low as possible, we decided to modify the electric component of a singe-use-camera with flashlight, as can be found almost everywhere. The coil is made from varnished wire and placed inside the camera exactly where the film has been.

Then the coil is soldered between the cameras electronic and its flashlight. Last but not least most single-use-cameras will require some kind of switch to be build into them, since their activating-mechanism usually is to small and primitive. Once the switch is connected and tested, the camera can be closed again and henceforth will serve as a RFID-Zapper, destroying RFID-Tags with the power of ordinary batteries."


John Cox, NetworkWorld.com

As if there wasn't enough for network professionals to worry about.

Ex-Forrester Research analyst John Robb describes a project that modifies a single-use film camera, to create a short range microwave pulse that can fry nearby RFID tags.

Robb says this and similar devices could be used to disrupt RFID-based supply chains. But...

...I'm skeptical. A short range device can only affect the tags immediately nearby. My guess is a would-be supply chain saboteur would have to visit an awful lot of Wal-Marts, and walk through most of every store, carrying around a backpack load of batteries to keep the little Zapper zapping.

Even then, it's not clear that the supply chain would be in fact disrupted: you might lose RFID data and tracking on the items zapped, but the RFID infrastructure of readers and servers would still be in place, ready to read the next lot of tagged merchandise.

The Zapper is the offspring of a German group calling itself the Chaos Communication Congress, which held its 22nd annual meeting last month in Berlin.

[NetworkWorld.com, GlobalGuerrillas.com]