HTG Explains: What is RFID?

RFID is a technology that surrounds us every day. It’s in our credit cards, passports, and some of the products we buy. Even many of our pets have RFID chips in them!

RFID is essentially a form of electronic bar tag — one that can be much smaller. A nearby reader can use radiowaves to read the RFID tag without any visual contact.

How RFID Works
RFID stands for radio-frequency identification. A small chip — known as an RFID tag — is attached to or implanted in an object. The tags contain information that can be read at short range via radio waves. The chip and reader don’t have to touch.

Some RFID tags can be powered by a battery, but many RFID tags aren’t self-powered. They’re powered by the electromagnetic field created by the reader. In other words, most RFID tags sit idle most of the time. When an RFID reader is comes near them or is waved over them, the reader provides enough power for the data on the tag to be read. It functions similarly to NFC (near-field communication.)

Common Uses of RFID
RFID tags can replace bar codes and QR codes. A bar code can only be read if the reader can visually see the bar code. RFID tags can be read if the reader is nearby, even if a bar code would be obscured. RFID tags can be used for tracking packages in the mail or goods in a warehouse. The RFID tag can contain tracking information or just a unique identification code.

Modern passports in many countries — including the USA and Canada — also contain an RFID chip. When you cross the border, the border agent can scan the passport and the machine can read the data from the RFID chip.

RFID chips are also used in credit cards with contactless payments. When you tap a credit card to pay for something, the machine reads an RFID chip embedded in the card. They’re also used for transit systems, tolls, and security access cards. They can be read by a machine with a quick tap.

Many household pets also have RFID chips embedded in them. If your dog or cat is “chipped,” it has a small microchip injected between its shoulder blades. The microchip normally doesn’t do anything and consumes no power. If your pet is ever lost, a veterinarian or animal shelter can read the microchip with an RFID reader. The chip has a unique identification number embedded in it, and the vet or shelter can call up the chip company and see whose name and address is associated with that pet’s unique number. Your pet can then be returned to you, even if it doesn’t have a collar or any other identifying information. This isn’t magic — it doesn’t provideGPS and you should ensure your contact details are up-to-date with the microchip company. It’s just a way for the pet to have unique identification information. The same technique can be used to associate a unique identification number with other animals — tiny RFID chips have even been used to track the movements of ants.

Security and Privacy Concernss
Some people are concerned that attackers could use a handheld device in a crowd to read RFID information from nearby credit cards with contactless payment information embedded in them. Identity thieves could read the same information from an RFID-enabled passport, or a security access card with an RFID chip. In 2006, a Dutch passport was read from ten meters away. That’s why some people purchase RFID-blocking wallets, card holders, or passport cases. These just work by including a metal material that blocks the radio waves of an RFID reader.

Other people are concerned that RFID could be used to track people’s movements. Perhaps the RFID chips in products we buy or in our credit cards themselves could be tracked by readers in various locations as we move around. This isn’t too crazy — in 2013, a company was using recycling bins around the city of London to collect information from nearby smartphones as they searched for Wi-Fi networks. They used this information to track people around the city of London and show tailored adds to them. Companies could attempt to do the same with nearby RFID tags.

No, you shouldn’t panic and start smashing your RFID-enabled credit cards and passports with a hammer. RFID is one of the many ways technology makes life more convenient, but can lead to new security and privacy problems. This is just something to be aware of.



RFID could be used for other purposes in the future. One old idea is that RFID could be used for shopping. You’d go to a grocery store and place all the items you want in your cart. Each item would have an RFID chip in it. When you’re done shopping, you’d simply walk out of the store and an RFID reader near the exit would automatically read all the RFID tags to determine what you’re buying. You’d be billed for those products without any scanning required. We seem a long way from that future, but it’s the type of thing RFID could do.

Desktop Fun: Autumn 2012 Wallpaper Collection

The most colorful time of year has arrived for those of you in the northern hemisphere and we have just what you need to make your desktop match the season. Turn your desktop into a vibrant wonderland of Fall color with our Autumn 2012 Wallpaper collection.

Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution.

Desktop Fun: Foggy Mornings Wallpaper Collection

Foggy mornings are special times where everything is wrapped in a quiet calmness while the world is slowly waking up. Bring the peace and beauty of those early mornings to your desktop with the first in our series of Foggy Mornings Wallpaper collections.

Foggy Mornings Series 1

Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution.

You Can’t Use Them: 8 Features Only Available in Windows 8 Enterprise

You can upgrade to the Professional edition of Windows 8 to get advanced features likeBitLocker encryption, but other features aren’t available to normal Windows users. They’re only in the Enterprise edition of Windows, which requires a volume-licensing agreement.

In Windows 7 and Vista, these Enterprise features were also available in the pricy Ultimate editions of Windows. There’s no Ultimate edition of Windows 8, so these features aren’t even available to enthusiasts.
Windows To Go

Windows To Go is a new feature in Windows 8, but it’s restricted to Windows 8 Enterprise. It allows you to install Windows onto a USB flash drive or external hard drive. You can then plug that USB drive into any computer and boot from it. You get a live Windows operating system running from a USB drive, and your files and settings are saved back to that drive. You can boot this copy of Windows on any computer, taking your operating system with you in your pocket. This is basically how aLinux live USB drive works — but for Windows.

This is a great feature that could be useful to many computer geeks and even normal users who now rely on Linux live USB environments. However, Microsoft is targeting this feature at IT departments. They’re positioning Windows To Go as a way to get a managed Windows 8 system on any computer.




AppLocker is the kind of security feature that could make a huge difference in the real world. AppLocker allows you to set rules for exactly what user accounts on a computer can run which programs. You could use AppLocker to set up a whitelist, ensuring a user account on your computer can only run a handful of safe applications.

Confusingly, the Professional edition of Windows will allow you to create AppLocker rules using the Group Policy Editor. However, these rules won’t be enforced unless you’re using an Enterprise edition of Windows, so don’t even try. This feature is found both in Windows 7 and Windows 8. On Windows 7, you can get it as part of the Ultimate edition of Windows 7 — on Windows 8, you can’t get it at all without a volume-licensing agreement.

This would be a great way to secure a Windows computer used by your kids or relatives — give them access to the applications they need and block everything else. We’ve successfully used the Family Safety feature to implement application whitelisting on other editions of Windows 8. It includes an application-whitelisting feature, although it’s a bit awkward to use and relies on the metaphor of “child” and “parent” accounts. If you’re the child trying to protect your parents’ computer, it may be a bit awkward to explain.


“Store App” Sideloading


By default, those new Windows 8 apps — the ones Microsoft used to call “Metro apps” but now calls “Store Apps” — can only be installed from the Windows Store. Unlike on Android — and unlike with traditional Windows desktop software, which you can get from anymore — you can’t install Windows 8 apps from outside the store. Windows 8 is like Apple’s iOS in this way. On iOS, this limitation has led tocontroversial games Apple won’t allow you to play on iOS devices.

The ability to install apps from outside the app store is known as “sideloading.” Only Enterprise editions of Windows have built-in support for sideloading, and that only works when they’re joined to a Windows domain. Enterprise systems not joined to a Windows domain don’t have this feature. Windows Professional computers joined to a domain also don’t have this feature unless you purchase a special license through your Microsoft volume-licensing agreement. The ability to run applications Microsoft hasn’t specifically approved is only for organizations with volume-licensing agreements.

Sideloading is literally the ability to install Store apps from outside the Store. For some reason, those Store apps are still called Store apps when they’re installed from outside the Store.


Other Features

For the sake of completeness, here are the other features available only on Enterprise editions of Windows 8. Even most Windows enthusiasts wouldn’t want to use these at home.
DirectAccess – DirectAccess is a VPN-like feature. Traditional VPN connections have to be initiated manually by the user. DirectAccess is designed to connect automatically every time a user connects to the Internet. A corporation can ensure laptops it distributes will always attempt to connect directly to their network, tunneling their Internet activity through an encrypted connection.
BranchCache – BranchCache is a feature designed for organizations that have multiple “branches” in different locations. For example, the main office might hold a server with useful data a branch office needs to access. Rather than access this data over the WAN (Internet) connection all day, BranchCache can create and maintain a local cache of the data. This speeds things up and reduces Internet connection usage. BranchCache can operate in “Distributed Cache” mode where its cache is stored across the computers in the branch office, or “Hosted Cache” mode where the cache is hosted on a server in the branch office.
RemoteFX Virtualization Features – Only an Enterprise edition of Windows can run in a RemoteFX virtual machine and use RemoteApp, RemoteFX virtual graphics processing unit (vGPU), and other advanced virtualization features. These features are designed for running Windows on a host server, providing access to that Windows environment to multiple clients accessing the Windows system remotely. This doesn’t matter if you’re just running Windows in a virtual machine on your home computer.
Services for Network File System (NFS) – The Enterprise edition of Windows includes support for the Network File System (NFS) protocol. NFS is a network-file-sharing protocol generally used by Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. You’ll need the Enterprise edition of Windows to access NFS shares without third-party software.



Subsystem for Unix-based Applications– Microsoft’s Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA) or Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) software provides a Unix-like environment designed to allow easier porting of Unix applications to Windows. This feature was deprecated on Windows 8 Enterprise and was completely removed in Windows 8.1 Enterprise. You’re better off using Cygwin if you need Unix applications on Windows — or even just running Linux in a virtual machine.

Most of these features won’t really make sense on non-Enterprise versions of Windows, although it would be nice to have the ability to access and learn them on Professional editions of Windows. However, some of these features could be very useful — Windows To Go would be a great alternative to Linux live USB drives, and AppLocker would be an excellent tool for locking down Windows PCs and protecting them from malware.

How to Create a Password Protected Folder without any Extra Software

There are a lot of methods that you can use to create a password protected folder, most of which require the use of some third party software. Using this neat method you can hide your folders with a quick batch script.

It’s important to note that this will not actually conceal your data from somebody that knows what they are doing.

Note: if you are a beginner you should be careful with this script.
Create Your Password Protected Folder

Before you get started you need to create a folder that will house your password protected folder, this is just an ordinary folder and can be located anywhere and named anything.



Navigate into your newly created folder and create a new Text Document. This can easily be done from the context menu.



Open the document, now paste the following code into the contents of the document:

cls 
@ECHO OFF 
title Folder Private 
if EXIST "HTG Locker" goto UNLOCK 
if NOT EXIST Private goto MDLOCKER 
:CONFIRM 
echo Are you sure you want to lock the folder(Y/N) 
set/p "cho=>" 
if %cho%==Y goto LOCK 
if %cho%==y goto LOCK 
if %cho%==n goto END 
if %cho%==N goto END 
echo Invalid choice. 
goto CONFIRM 
:LOCK 
ren Private "HTG Locker" 
attrib +h +s "HTG Locker" 
echo Folder locked 
goto End 
:UNLOCK 
echo Enter password to unlock folder 
set/p "pass=>" 
if NOT %pass%== PASSWORD_GOES_HERE goto FAIL 
attrib -h -s "HTG Locker" 
ren "HTG Locker" Private 
echo Folder Unlocked successfully 
goto End 
:FAIL 
echo Invalid password 
goto end 
:MDLOCKER 
md Private 
echo Private created successfully 
goto End 
:End

Change the PASSWORD_GOES_HERE text to the password you want to set. Now go ahead and save the file as locker.bat.



Once the file is saved as a batch file you can delete the original text file.



Now run your batch file by double clicking on it–the first time you run it, it will create a folder called Private. This is where you can store all your secret things. When you have finished adding all your stuff to the Private folder, run locker.bat again.



This time you will be asked if you sure that you want to lock the folder, press the “Y” key and hit enter to lock your folder.



You will see that your Private folder quickly disappears.



If you run the script yet again, you will prompted for a password.



If you enter the same password as you set in the script the Private folder will reappear if you enter the incorrect password the script will just Terminate.
Warning

Most people don’t know how to show system files, but anybody who has some experience will probably be able to quickly figure it out in the Folder Options.



Also, any ordinary user who unchecks the box will most probably be scared off by the warning message that appears.



The second way someone could comprise the folder is to open the batch file and read your password. It’s definitely not a really secure way to hide your files, but it is fun.

Attribution note: We found this script on dozens of different web sites going back many years. We have no idea who first created the script, so we’ve omitted any sort of attribution link. If you do have proof that you first created the script, contact us and we’ll adjust the article accordingly.
If You Forget Your Password

Seems like once a week somebody writes in asking how to figure out the password they set. And the answer is really simple: Right-click on the locker.bat file and choose Edit.



Then you can see the password you set in the file.