Trade.Information

Topic Name: Which is more effective bluetooth or RFID?

Category: Telecommunication

Research persons: Jean-Marc Manach

Location: LeMonde, France

Details

The Bluetooth devices can be identified, monitored and followed by a much more effective than RFID chips that have yet more hit the headlines. Researchers have conducted tests ...
"Social networks are everywhere. You just have to find out from multiple databases already available, or that your systems generate and collect. "Vassilis Kostakos studying human-machine interactions. He especially likes develop systems ubiquitous, garner and analyze data, particularly from computers and telephones that has turned into Bluetooth scanners, and installed in the city of Bath, Great Britain.
It also participates in the collective project Crawdad aggregation of data wirelessly to Dartmouth. Their goal is to understand, from these traces of mobility, how "real people, applications and tools using real networks in real conditions, to assess the real problems, propose possible solutions and new services" .
Last summer, it launched an application interfacing Bluetooth and Facebook to explore the interactions between the real and virtual worlds. Launched from Second Life, it helps to know, for example, who are the people, friends or strangers with whom you spend the most time for real.

Vassilis Kostakos is also part of the research project CityWare, which aims to study the feasibility of ubiquitous systems and devices for augmented reality in an urban environment. In English, he called the urban computing, a phrase hardly translatable into french Is it urban informatization, urbadination (or urbatique) or, as proposed by Jean-Louis Fréchin technology ubiques and urban areas?
Specifically, Vassilis Kostakos participates in a project tracking large-scale combining GPS, Bluetooth and other sensors to measure the actual movement of passengers in the city of Funchal on the island of Madeira. And he was also interested in ways of spreading a virus in the city, looking at how it spread to phone via Bluetooth phones.
The Bluetooth, more dangerous than RFID?
We knew long Bluetooth sensitive to the hijacking of uses (like its competitor NFC, for that matter). In an article published in late April, Vassilis Kostakos looks at the implications on privacy, the Bluetooth technology.
For that, he left the observation that if, so far, researchers, media and associations defending the freedoms or consumers are especially interested in the risks posed by RFID, it is the Bluetooth technology that has become the general public and is part of our daily lives. The analysis scanners installed at their Bath and has identified 10,000 devices in 6 months, and discovered that 7.5% of passers had activated the Bluetooth module on their laptops.
If these two technologies are not for the same purpose, risks regarding privacy are quite similar insofar as they are both based on notions of unique identifier and mobility. The difference is that the risks associated with RFID are potentially more damaging in the long run, while those related to Bluetooth are today:
On average, RFID chips can be read at 30 cm, against 100 metres for Bluetooth,
the volume of data contained in a chip is limited, so there are no limits on the information exchanged via Bluetooth,
RFID is based on the distinction between chips placed on objects that only a priori can consult readers installed by businesses, while Bluetooth transforms an individual transmitter and receiver,
RFID relates to this day essentially the only logistics sector, while Bluetooth is everywhere,
it is possible, and planned to destroy the RFID chips, particularly in post-shops, one can only disable Bluetooth and even temporarily only once the device identified, it is possible to find out when he returns to Nearby even if it is activated so furtive.
Vassilis Kostakos proposes to equip Bluetooth devices dials which, in the manner of those who control the volume of our Walkmans, would limit the power of the signal. It also proposes equipping them with software, as tools of statistics websites, record, which was connected to the device, how often, how long and to do what.
"I am not a number," said the prisoner
He noted finally that there has been little, so far identified a lot of attacks exploiting those features and functions potentially damaging. It should be noted however that several software offer already exploit vulnerabilities that are found in some Bluetooth phones or to pirate software components in order to impersonate, to monitor the use, to access data without authorization, changed, and so on. There are even Bluetooth rifles capable of capturing data to more than 1.5 kilometers away…
But there may be worse for the violation of privacy: the prospect of widespread listening via Bluetooth. Vassilis and his brother, Panos, a researcher specializing in terrorism and organized crime, published another article, 5 days before the previous one. Noting that many foreigners are in prisons in Europe, and some found themselves recruited by Islamic militants, they explain why and how it would be interesting to equip prisons and prisoners , Bluetooth devices in order to better identify their social networks.
For their demonstration, they rely on the results of data recorded by Vassilis in Bath, and on the university campus which serves as a test platform for its application Facebook. But it is nowhere indicated that passersby were informed that their Bluetooth devices and their movements were monitored. Similarly, those who install the application Facebook do not know that their data are used by academics, and even less that they serve as guinea pigs for a draft prisons panoptiques Bluetooth. Not Otherwise, decidedly, be reassured.

Jean-Marc Manach is a Journalist, born in 1971, worked at Transfert.net, ZDNet.fr, Nova Magazine, France 5, LeMonde.fr, etc.. And for InternetActu since 1 April 2005.