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Yes.
They are supposed to be. So was your cellular phone, pager, e-mail,
FAX, and credit card. But then, who hasn't heard of clone phones,
free pagers, intercepted FAX's and e-mail and fraudulent credit card use.
Despite the earnest attempts of manufacturers to provide secure products
to their customers; hackers, criminals and the Government have always found
ways to side step the security measures. Smartcard hacking kits are
already freely advertised on the Internet for "educational" purposes.
The most popular target of these kits has been smartcards used in conjunction
with Satellite TV decoder boxes. As these cards begin to hold more
valuable information, the temptation to break into them will increase.
Smartcard
manufacturers and service providers are quick to point to PIN numbers,
encryption and biometric techniques as evidence of the high security of
these cards. If you surf the net, you will see one manufacturer after
another bragging about how secure their product is. We recommend
you consider the source and how much they stand to lose if you don't believe
them. The truth is that the factories where these cards are manufactured
are more secure than most Government facilities because the card manufacturers
are terrified someone might steal the operating system that must be installed
onto the chip. Some companies have dedicated entire departments to
breaking into their own smartcards in order to find their weaknesses before
their customers do. In the end, all of this sensitive, valuable information
must pass through the hands of human beings which are all subject to corruption.
Let
us be clear. We are not claiming contactless smartcards are
not secure. The chip and card manufacturers are very sincere in
their attempts to make their product as secure as possible, if not only
out of greed. And they may indeed find a way to make them absolutely
secure. But there is ample historical precedent to believe these
cards will experience periodic breeches of security as one encryption method
after another is compromised by hackers or internal corruption. Even
if these cards someday become impenetrable to hackers and criminals, there
is still the Government..............
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