A new spray-on antenna technology from a small company named Chamtech has gained a lot of media attention. Also described as spray-on WiFi, the technology allows users to spray-paint wireless antennas onto anything from walls to cars to trees.
While the rest of the world tries to imagine what it could do for cellular and Internet services, I of course, cannot help wondering what it could do for security.
How it works
First, allow me to explain how it works. Chamtech’s spray-on antenna uses a nano-material made up of millions of microscopic capacitors. When sprayed or painted onto a surface it acts as an amplified wireless antenna extending wireless signals without the use of an external power source and without generating any heat. Some testing revealed that the technology could extend wireless range more than a hundredfold.
For IP CCTV applications, this could greatly simplify wireless installations. Need to transmit a camera wirelessly through a forest? No problem, simply spray a little paint on a few trees and instantly you will have a perfectly reliably wireless link. Line-of-sight could become a problem of the past if a coat of paint is all you need to relay signals through buildings, trees, and other obstacles.
Access control possibilities
The potential goes far beyond wireless surveillance systems. When tested on an RFID chip with a five-foot read range, the spray-on antenna extended the chip’s range to seven hundred feet. Extending RFID in such a simple manner could revolutionize access control. Unfortunately, besides the obvious benefits of an extended read-range, there are also enormous risks. Could spray-painting a card reader cause a door to unlock as it reads a fob hundreds of feet away? Obviously not a risk any security professional would want to face.
Short-range wireless technologies like Bluetooth could also suffer. These technologies enjoy certain security benefits that come directly from having a limited wireless range. Hackers need to be in close proximity to devices in order to hack them using Bluetooth, but that might change. Could a quick coat of paint leave your device accessible via Bluetooth from hundreds or even thousands of feet away? If it could, we might all be treating our Bluetooth devices very differently.
Fortunately, for now, we will not have to worry about these security threats. The spray-on antenna is not yet available to the general public. In fact, apart from Chamtech, it is unclear who has access to it other than the US government — which just opens up a whole new level of questions and possibilities, including whether the US government has exclusive rights to the technology or not. Let us just hope that whoever does thinks carefully before they start painting.
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