When it come to get over people ’s every movement — or “ location - aware program ” if you ’re endeavor to sound less creepy — nothing beats the badge at hack conferences .
This year , HOPE ’s Attendee Meta - Data or AMD badgereached young heights , and suggested more about what you could do with RFID attached to people — both good and forged .
“ This badge know what talk you go to . It knows who you talk to . It knows what place in the conference you go . It knows when you were there , ” tell Rob Zinkov , of the HOPE badge squad .
The HOPE badge was stand for to be hacked and get masses blink the firmware . “ It really invoke to people in both hardware and software system , ” says Zinkov . The basic badge is an active RFID that can report itself and interpret other active RFIDs up to 60 ft out , all in a tiny and entirely capable source parcel . It has a small bit of computer storage that let it take down other badge ID number for later , and eight sensors the wearer can press with a finger .
Attendee Adam Mayer hacked his badge to let him steal the identity operator of anyone whose badge report to his own , and walk around the societal organisation as them for a few moment before stealing the next identity .
“ The badge operate on multiple levels , ” says Aestetix , project managing director and pointy hirsute political boss of the AMD badge task . It allows its wearer to see what other negotiation have concerned attender that have look similar talks , and find oneself Friend . “ On the snotty-nosed side , we can take what we see from it and we can apply that to the next league . ” Aestetix pauses , and grins . “ There ’s also the liberal privacy aspect . We have a arrangement that knows exactly where you were at all times . ”
The overproduced badge of drudge conferences got started with Defcon ’s challenge tohack the badge , which generally involves a circle control panel and risky resource . ( Last year ’s entries let in attach a Geiger counter to the badge and using three badges to vanish a robotic Colonel Blimp — and those were the losers . )
The other parent of the HOPE badge is theSputnikexperiment from the 23rd Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin in 2006 , where more or less 1000 attendees wore RFIDs on their badges that reported to 35 stations in the conference , tracking each person ’s movement . The creators of Sputnik mapped the motion of attendees and put them on display on large monitors .
HOPE went much further , add together in computer hardware hacking and a web site . They wanted to institute in program software as well as firmware and data visualization . HOPE ’s badge squad connected the badge IDs to a social internet , take into account for friending , deriving preferences from talk attendance , and letting attendees associate existent world data like websites with their in - con role .
“ It ’s kind of perpetually in alpha point , ” enjoin Aestetix . They judge to add enough to the badge each HOPE that it never quite works mightily , and stretches both the hacker putting on the league and the hackers get the badge . Work went into the badge through much of the year .
Zinkov used the social internet data attendees contribute about themselves to spider their website and build even more ended data about everyone . Now they are build up data visualizations and maps of correlation with group discussion action . Anyone can get into the game , too . A downpour of the 8 GB of collected data is publicly available . ( Last year ’s data weighed in at only 20 MB . )
The Hackers on Planet Earth group discussion is an outsized 2600 meeting that happens every two twelvemonth in New York . It ’s get a farseeing way in its time , ideas of hacking expand from software to hardware , society , food and even sex . Quinn Norton is reporting from New York .
colligate : Wal - Mart Radio Tags to Track Clothing[WSJ ]
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