Description Of Heaven

Published by: Codrut Nistor, in News

July20th2008

If you ask me about Heaven and Hell, all I can tell you for sure is that I love Black Sabbath's song, and I am also crazy about some of those many covers recorded and released by various bands, including Overkill, Solitude Aeturnus or Enola Gay. I know, you may say this has nothing to do with the software world, but I must tell you it has a lot to do, because hackers are considered to be the demons of this world, and a recent court decision just turned Netherlands into a "hackers' heaven," if we exaggerate a little!

I know those waiting to read about the facilities in Heaven, especially wireless access, will be disappointed, but I can't give you the accurate description of heaven, because there's no human able to do that, but if we talk about Netherlands, here's the story...

Earlier this summer, London Transport's Oyster Card was hacked by Dutch researchers, who turned a laptop into a mobile card lab, and scored a day's worth of free rides. So far, so good. They did it for the sake of science, of course, and now, a Dutch court gave them permission to publish details on how they did it, disregarding the protests of the chipmaker involved, although this wasn't just some small company, but a Philips spinoff, called NXP.

The tragicomical part of the story is that these cards are used around the world for both public transit and building security, and I am sure somebody will have to spend a lot of money to make things right, and that must happen really soon. "Driven by a sense of social responsibility, the University immediately and confidentially informed the Dutch Government as well as the manufacturer (NXP) of the results of the independent research on the Mifare Classic Chip. Since March, the researchers have deliberately withheld further details of the imperfections of the chip in order to give those involved, including NXP, the opportunity to take the necessary steps. Publication of the scientific article was anticipated in October 2008 and in June the article was sent confidentially to NXP so that NXP could ask for a legal opinion," said the University behind the researchers involved in the whole deal.

Well, at least they did it for "the greater good," and now NXP has enough time to solve its security issues, I guess. Since even the Dutch government's buildings were protected by the smartcards system hacked earlier, I guess Netherlands could be used as a description of heaven for hackers...as long as they don't do it with bad intentions! ;)