In a packed room at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas yesterday, an Android smartphone was tapped with a white plastic card, and within seconds it was running malicious code that allowed an attacker to remotely access the device.

The demonstration was given by high-profile hacker Charlie Miller, who was the first person to demonstrate a way to seize control of the iPhone, in 2007, and who has demonstrated many novel attacks on Apple devices since. He outlined a number of reasons why the contactless near-field communication, or NFC, chips appearing in smartphones will bring new security worries as well as convenient new features — a talk that was the result of nine months of research.

“There’s going to be a lot of phones coming out with this technology, and so it would be nice to know if there’s any security problems in it,” said Miller.