MIFARE

The brand includes proprietary solutions based on various levels of the ISO/IEC 14443 Type-A 13.56 MHz contactless smart card standard.

For each of these IC types, 16 bytes per sector are reserved for the keys and access conditions and can not normally be used for user data.

[citation needed] The Samsung TecTile NFC tag stickers use MIFARE Classic chips.

[8] MIFARE Plus, when used in older transportation systems that do not yet support AES on the reader side, still leaves an open door to attacks.

Cards based on these chips are so inexpensive that they are often used for disposable tickets for events such as the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

With Triple DES, MIFARE Ultralight C uses a widely adopted standard, enabling easy integration in existing infrastructures.

[citation needed] Key applications for MIFARE Ultralight C are public transportation, event ticketing, loyalty and NFC Forum tag type 2.

It comes pre-programmed with the general-purpose MIFARE DESFire operating system which offers a simple directory structure and files.

[citation needed] The second evolution of the MIFARE DESFire contactless IC family, broadly backwards compatible.

[22] A cloud-based platform that digitizes MIFARE product-based smart cards and makes them available on NFC-enabled smartphones and wearables.

[citation needed] In the NTT contactless IC telephone card project, three parties joined: Tokin-Tamura-Siemens, Hitachi (Philips-contract for technical support), and Denso (Motorola-only production).

In 2012 NXP signed an agreement with Giesecke & Devrient to integrate MIFARE product-based applications on their secure SIM products.

[32] A presentation by Henryk Plötz and Karsten Nohl[33] at the Chaos Communication Congress in December 2007 described a partial reverse-engineering of the algorithm used in the MIFARE Classic chip.

[34] A paper that describes the process of reverse engineering this chip was published at the August 2008 USENIX security conference.

[35] In March 2008 the Digital Security[36] research group of the Radboud University Nijmegen made public that they performed a complete reverse-engineering and were able to clone and manipulate the contents of an OV-Chipkaart which is using MIFARE Classic chip.

[38] The schematics and software are released under the free GNU General Public License by Jonathan Westhues in 2007.

They demonstrate it is even possible to perform card-only attacks using just an ordinary stock-commercial NFC reader in combination with the libnfc library.

It can then be combined with the nested authentication attack in the Nijmegen Oakland paper to recover subsequent keys almost instantly.

[56] These variants are insusceptible for all card-only attacks publicly known until then, while remaining backward compatible with the original MIFARE Classic.

[57] Since the discovery of this attack, NXP is officially recommending to migrate from MIFARE Classic product-based systems to higher security products.

[58] In November 2010, security researchers from the Ruhr University released a paper detailing a side-channel attack against MIFARE product-based cards.

[59] The paper demonstrated that MIFARE DESFire product-based cards could be easily emulated at a cost of approximately $25 in "off the shelf" hardware.

[60] In October 2011 David Oswald and Christof Paar of Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany, detailed how they were able to conduct a successful "side-channel" attack against the card using equipment that can be built for nearly $3,000.

Hence, to avoid, e.g. manipulation or cloning of smart cards used in payment or access control solutions, proper actions have to be taken: on the one hand, multi-level countermeasures in the back end allow to minimize the threat even if the underlying RFID platform is insecure," In a statement[62] NXP said that the attack would be difficult to replicate and that they had already planned to discontinue the product at the end of 2011.

In September 2012 a security consultancy Intrepidus[63] demonstrated at the EU SecWest event in Amsterdam,[64] that MIFARE Ultralight product-based fare cards in the New Jersey and San Francisco transit systems can be manipulated using an Android application, enabling travelers to reset their card balance and travel for free in a talk entitled "NFC For Free Rides and Rooms (on your phone)".

[65] Although not a direct attack on the chip but rather the reloading of an unprotected register on the device, it allows hackers to replace value and show that the card is valid for use.

For systems based on contactless smartcards (e.g. public transportation), security against fraud relies on many components, of which the card is just one.

Typically, to minimize costs, systems integrators will choose a relatively cheap card such as a MIFARE Classic and concentrate security efforts in the back office.

With this certification, the main focus was placed on the contactless communication of the wireless interface, as well as to ensure proper implementation of all the commands of MIFARE product-based cards.