RFID-Zapper Shoots to Kill

By Jonathan Collins

Jan. 23, 2006—German privacy advocacy group FoeBuD plans to manufacture and sell a device that consumers could used to disable RFID tags permanently. The gadget—called the RFID-Zapper—was developed by two students in Berlin, Germany.

FoeBuD says it wants to manufacture the RFID-Zapper and sell it at its online store. The group met with a hardware developer last week, but says it has no timescale for production or product price yet.

One of the disposable cameras the team used to make its RFID-Zapper.

The creative minds behind the RFID-Zapper belong to Tim and Chris (the pair would not divulge their last names), also known, respectively, as MiniMe and Mahajivana. The young inventors say their motivation was concern over the potential use of RFID tags on individual items purchased by consumers. "We read a lot about RFID and its future use and got worried," says Mahajivana. "Some easy way of getting rid of them had to be found. Frying them in the microwave oven wouldn't be an adequate solution most of the time, as it could damage the already-purchased item the tag was attached to. But causing the chip to burn through somehow seemed to be a good idea."

The duo's prototype uses the casing and electronics of a single-use camera with a flash. Within the next few weeks, the duo claims they will post online instructions explaining how others can build a copy of their tag killer for their own use. "Whoever wants to build an RFID-Zapper is welcome to do so, as long as he's not making any profit with it," says Mahajivana.

The design replaces the camera's built-in flash with a coil of coated copper wire. The inventors removed the film and, after disconnecting the camera's capacitor from the flash, soldered one end of the coil to the capacitor and the other end to one pole of a switch used to turn the device on or off. They then connected the switch's remaining pole to the capacitor's other terminal. Once the camera is reassembled and held very close to an RFID tag, the duo explains, pressing its shutter button causes the coil to emit an electromagnetic pulse that will overload the tag's circuitry and destroy its ability to function.

After zapping several tags, MiniMe and Mahajivana used an RFID-Tag-Finder to test them for signs of life. "It finds passive RFID tags operating at 13.56 MHz, which are the ones we can zap," explains Mahajivana. The inventors built the RFID-Tag-Finder based on details published in an article appearing on the Web site of C'T, a technology magazine.