[Noisebridge-discuss] clipper card hacking

Ryan Rawson ryanobjc at gmail.com
Thu Oct 7 21:49:46 UTC 2010


Smart card applications are useful... there is no reason the
megacompanies should have sole proprietorship over such technologes.
There are a ton of fun crypto applications one could do.  Some cards
have mini-OSes to boot. What about consumer reading hardware?  Control
over various things wouldn't be too bad, perhaps building a custom
beverage dispensing device.  Etc.

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 2:45 PM, Christie Dudley <longobord at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hm.  If you're talking about the clipper card, that's cool, have fun
> with that, but I can't work on that. (sorry to hijack the thread!)
>
> If you're talking about the stuff I'm looking at - ISO 24730-5 - it
> operates at 2.40-2.48GHz.  For those who know their spectrum, you'll
> pick up that this is the same chunk of spectrum as:
> Bluetooth
> Zigbee
> 802.11
> etc.
>
> The ISM band is hot for new applications.
>
> Christie
> _______
> But wait... there's no FCC on the moon!
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Ryan Rawson <ryanobjc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> That's all really interesting.  I'm off to nyc for a week or so, so
>> I'll have to pick up later... The current issue would be even just
>> reading from the card.  The previous threads are noting that the cards
>> are 35 mhz, so the question is, how hard would it be to acquire or
>> construct/hack/modify a reader to read that frequency?
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Christie Dudley <longobord at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Oh, and links to EFF and ACLU discussions on the topic:
>>>
>>> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/reading-writing-and-rfid-chips-scary-back-school
>>> http://www.aclunc.org/issues/technology/blog/privacy_and_safety_questions_loom_over_federal_program.shtml
>>>
>>> There's a significant chance the ACLUs probes will cause the school
>>> district to backtrack and pull these, in which case equipment loans
>>> aren't going to happen.  But to me, a system that does as much as this
>>> and hasn't really been examined is worth at least poking about with.
>>> It's groundbreaking!
>>>
>>> Christie
>>> _______
>>> But wait... there's no FCC on the moon!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Christie Dudley <longobord at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I don't feel like I can ethically hack these, having recently worked
>>>> for the company.  I can explain a little bit, but probably not a lot
>>>> more than you can find out for yourselves.
>>>>
>>>> I'm interested, however, in hacking another protocol that the EFF and
>>>> ACLU are interested in hacking a new active RFID protocol that they're
>>>> currently using on head start kids.  I have a few people thinking
>>>> about it already, and there's a good chance we can get equipment
>>>> loaned to us to hack.
>>>>
>>>> The protocol is still quite new.  ISO 24730-5 was only ratified in
>>>> April of this year.  The Chirp Spread Spectrum bit encoding is pretty
>>>> neat in that the encoding itself can be used to measure distance to
>>>> the source.
>>>>
>>>> Christie
>>>> _______
>>>> But wait... there's no FCC on the moon!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Bryan Beeley <bryan at beeley.org> wrote:
>>>>> I was commuting using the Clipper/Translink card for a while, and I was
>>>>> able to get it to work almost every time, as long as I was paying
>>>>> attention.  It is just very particular about the way that you present
>>>>> the card to the reader.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would be interested in working with others on understanding the card.
>>>>> I also have software experience, and a fair amount of experience with
>>>>> hardware credentials and readers.  However, my experience with building
>>>>> custom hardware is fairly limited.
>>>>>
>>>>> Bryan
>>>>>
>>>>> On 10/04/2010 10:51 PM, Jonathan Lassoff wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 9:28 PM, Ryan Rawson<ryanobjc at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It does seem that some swipes take longer than others, perhaps as low
>>>>>>> as 300-500ms.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Why would anyone build a high volume transit system based on this?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Personally, I find Clipper/Translink pretty unusable. In the times
>>>>>> that I've tried to use it, it usually takes 1-2 seconds and 2-3 tries
>>>>>> before it successfully tags.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I bummed that Muni is canceling their beautifully colored passes and
>>>>>> forcing people that want them to carry around RF cards. I liked being
>>>>>> able to collect the colored passes for posterity.
>>>>>> Now that I've started biking more, I've basically given up on Muni as a result.
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>
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>>
>



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