Category: Technical articles

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • Why one shouldn’t trust card’s serial number

    Both ISO 14443 and ISO 15693 mandates that the contactless/proximity cards or tags all have a ‘more-or-less unique’ physical identifier, that is required to identify the card or tag during the initial discovery process (and during the anti-collision loop when there’s more than one card in the field). This identifier is called UID in 14443-A…