Wall Of Sheep Hacker Group Exposes NFC's Risks

On the final day of Def Con 2013, I had the unique opportunity to interview the hackers behind the Wall of Sheep hacker group. The objective of Wall of Sheep is to spread awareness to computer users around the world about implementing measures to protect their personal data simply by using simple security measures when they connect to networks. The security of online data has never been more in the forefront of public opinion than the present. With the recent NSA incident, many in the U.S. are still wondering about the privacy of their personal data. People also may be thinking about what steps they can take in their everyday computing in order to protect themselves from attacks from malicious hackers while using web browsers and mobile phones.

I spoke directly with the awesome guys behind the Wall of Sheep hacker group, whose motto is, “Security Awareness For the Flock.” Their mission is that of the hacker. The good kind that is. It’s about showing the world what hacking does “outside the box” to liberate technology so it can perform outside the confines of it’s original purpose. We talked about the groundbreaking results of their NFC Security Awareness Project. Wall of Sheep showed me a demo of the NFC hack they have developed that exposes a major security risk for users of this smart technology. According to the Wall of Sheep  security experts I spoke with at Def Con 2013, the “potential risk comes from someone with malicious intent creating or replacing an existing NFC tag with infected content. Malicious intent can vary from collecting unauthorized information about the device to changing the device settings to delivering malicious software to the device for remote access.”