Print and encode simultaneously using SpringCard CrazyWriter and Evolis Zenius

Evolis Zenius is a color or monochrome card printer. Evolis offers SpringCard CrazyWriter PC/SC (ISO 14443, ISO 15693 + 2 SAM) as the contactless encoding option for Zenius -as well as for the other printers in its portfolio. Zenius plus CrazyWriter makes it easy to issue personalized cards on-the-field. In this article we’ll show how … Read more

Windows 7 complains on missing driver for smartcards – a practical workaround

Smartcards and smartcard-aware applications using application level commands (APDUs) are older than Windows and worked very well in the past, until Microsoft suddently decided that a smartcard shouldn’t be handheld directly by the applications anymore, and introduced the concept of smartcard driver software (ICC Service Provider withing the PC/SC framework). This issue sometimes occurs with our … Read more

Mifare Plus in a nutshell

Following the breakdown of Mifare Classic security, NXP has released a new generation of contactless cards to fill the gap, the Mifare Plus. To ease the migration of the existing applications, this new chip keeps the memory model of the Mifare Classic : the card is structured as an array of 16-byte blocks, and the … Read more

Java + PC/SC = accessing smartcards from a web page

The Java Smartcard I/O API (javax.smartcardio, JSR 268) introduced in Java 1.6 is the bridge between PC/SC readers and the Java world. Java-based applications and applets may now communicate with smartcards in an interoperable and portable way. This makes it possible for web pages to access data stored in smartcards, or to invoke services running … Read more

Mifare is out of 32-bit IDs

NXP Semiconductors has recently warned their customers that they are running out of unique IDs for the Mifare Classic family. A detailed application note is also available to give precize answers to technical questions. Since the beginning, every card in the Mifare Classic family (1k, 4k, Mini) has a 32-bit identifier, said to be unique … Read more

Mifare UltraLight C : low-cost yet high security

NXP (formerly Philips SemiConductors) Mifare UltraLight chip (MF0ICU1) is a inexpensive contactless memory, widely used to make disposable transport tickets or other low-cost identification tags. As MF0ICU1 lacks of authentication or even password protection schemes, the reading application has to way to determine whether the serial number and the data come from a genuine card, … Read more