Flaw in smart cards poses security risk for transit, building access

Transit systems across Canada stand to lose tens of thousands of dollars to fare fraud, and access to office buildings could be compromised, after a security flaw in some of their smart-card technology was widely publicized this week.

Computer-security researchers at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands revealed how the smart-card technology, called Mifare, can be hacked to let anyone with a computer and $100 worth of parts create counterfeit transit and building-access passes.

Mifare uses a radio-frequency-emitting computer chip embedded in a plastic card. Transit riders wave the card over a reader to pay fares, while employees and students flash it at secured doorways to gain admittance in many offices and schools.

The technology has been implemented in transit systems in St. John's, Gatineau, Que., the Greater Toronto Area and the Ontario cities of Kingston and Brantford, and is under consideration for use in Saskatoon.

Rust to dust

I have been a collector of (clean-but-)rusty objects for a number of years, and this article fits right in with my own fascination for the inevitability of Entropy!

The Beauty of Decay

Take the stairs instead

This trompe-l’œil staircase inside an elevator is actually an ad for Becel margarine in Istanbul, Turkey!

HIV 'Fossil' reveals virus history

A preserved specimen of lymph node nearly half a century old has revealed how rapidly the HIV virus has diversified, according to international research.

A team of researchers from around the world has been trawling through decades-old tissue samples from African hospital archives in the hope of finding samples containing the HIV virus.

They struck it lucky with a sample that was collected back in 1960, from a woman living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This is the second-oldest sample of the HIV virus ever found - the oldest is from 1959.