Dutch government gags Oyster researchers

[Quote:]

The publication of a scientific paper by Radboud University that discusses design flaws of the MIFARE chip in cards such as the Oyster travelcard may be in jeopardy. Dutch secretary of state Tineke Huizinga has urged the university not to publish any secrets that may lead to abuse.

Last week researchers from Radboud University in Nijmegen revealed they had cracked and cloned London’s Oyster travel card. Earlier this year the researchers did the same to the Dutch MIFARE travel card. As a result, the introduction of the €1bn transport payment system in the Netherlands has now been postponed.

The Dutch researchers were planning to publish their scientific paper, appropriately named Dismantling MIFARE Classic, at the European Computer Security Conference Esorics in October, but secretary of state Huizinga has called upon the university to exercise responsibility.

These days “responsibility” apparently means “don’t embarrass the politicians”… the Uni is best of releasing it as soon as possible - otherwise when the next person cracks it (pretty soon now that it is known that it is possible) the Uni will be blamed for leaking the information anyway. The choice is between getting blamed for taking a principled stand, or getting blamed for leaking they didn’t do.

RSS feed

Comments »

No comments yet.

Name (required)
E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
URI
Your Comment (smaller size | larger size)
You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> in your comment.

indoor-dictatorial