Frying a RFID Tag
I and some friends participated in the European Congress of Radiology (ECR) 2005. At this
conference RFID tags were embedded into name tags (the organizers made no secret about it). In the picture you can see a name tag that was take apart to make the chip and the antenna visible. 
They were used for tracking attendence to
sessions. Attendence was important to doctors because they could gain "Continuous Medical Education" (CME) credits at this conference. Well,
since we were physicists, we were not interested in these credits. Actually, I was more woried about the implications of being watched by
a Big Brother and I guess that's true for my friends as well. Not because I had anything
to hide - who cares which sessions I attended and which not, I did not get paid for it anyways - but because it is kind of worrisome if one
gets tracked everywhere and accepts it without thinking about it. So, over a couple of beers we discussed this matter and how one can
circumvent it - I guess that's one thing physicists love to do. One of us had a great idea: "Let's see what happens if we put it into the
microwave".
So, we put the badge into the microwave.
Set the microwave to 80 W and 2 seconds
and pressed the start button. After less than two seconds one could see a bright flash at exactly the spot where the chip was on the
badge. This did not work once only, but every time we repeated it. And, of course, we had to film this. The movie
is pretty spectacular.
To see if the name tag, which was made out of paper, itself was affected by this procedure we also placed a complete badge - so in this
case neither the antenna nor the chip were visible, because they were both embedded in the badges's paper - into the
microwave. Also, in this case one could see a very bright flash at the spot of the chip. The paper itself was not burned. Only if one
looked very closely one could see that it had turned yellow slightly at the place of the chip.
Disclaimer
Destroying a RFID tag might be illegal in some cases - just think of a RFID in a passport. And although I do not think it should do any harm to the microwave if you use it for destroying a RFID, I do not take any responsibility if it does in your case. The same is true for any other unwanted side effects. If you want to play around, do it at your own risk!
Cool! --georg, Sun, 27 Mar 2005 12:47:50 +0200 reply
This is pretty cool stuff :-)
good barbecue -- Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:22:16 +0200 reply
fight the electric control
Have you read Spychips? -- Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:51:58 +0100 reply
Stephan. Found your website and RFID disabling experiment through a recent link from another site. Have you read the book Spychips? It's all about RFID from the consumer perspective. In it, Katherine Albrecht and I recount a similar experiment. The video brought back fond memories.
Liz McIntyre?
microwave -- Thu, 10 Aug 2006 10:11:50 +0200 reply
Miele - Verlässlichkeit für viele Jahre
Great! -- Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:44:33 +0100 reply
Never heard about something like this before, great idea
Never heard about something like this before, great idea D
Thanks -- Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:48:07 +0100 reply
this is interesting
booksfro -- Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:23:16 +0200 reply
hi all :)
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