User menu

Accès à distance ? S'identifier sur le proxy UCLouvain

A practical attack on the MIFARE classic

Primary tabs

de Koning Gans, G. Hoepman, J.-H. Garcia, F.D.

The mifare Classic is the most widely used contactless smart card in the market. Its design and implementation details are kept secret by its manufacturer. This paper studies the architecture of the card and the communication protocol between card and reader. Then it gives a practical, low-cost, attack that recovers secret information from the memory of the card. Due to a weakness in the pseudo-random generator, we are able to recover the keystream generated by the CRYPTO 1 stream cipher. We exploit the malleability of the stream cipher to read all memory blocks of the first sector of the card. Moreover, we are able to read any sector of the memory of the card, provided that we know one memory block within this sector. Finally, and perhaps more damaging, the same holds for modifying memory blocks.

Document type Communication à un colloque (Conference Paper) – Présentation orale avec comité de sélection
Access type Accès restreint
Publication date 2008
Conference "Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications. 8th IFIP WG 8.8/11.2 International Conference, CARDIS 2008", London, UK (8-11 September 2008)
Peer reviewed yes
Host document Grimaud, G.; Standaert, F.-X.; ; "Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications. 8th IFIP WG 8.8/11.2 International Conference, CARDIS 2008"- p. 267-282 (ISBN : 978-3-540-85892-8)
Publisher Springer-verlag
Affiliation UCL
Links
  1. Finkenzeller Klaus, RFID Handbook, ISBN:0470844027, 10.1002/0470868023
  2. Garcia, F.D., de Koning Gans, G., Muijrers, R., van Rossum, P., Verdult, R., Schreur, R.W.: Dismantling MIFARE Classic (forthcoming)
  3. Hoepman Jaap-Henk, Hubbers Engelbert, Jacobs Bart, Oostdijk Martijn, Schreur Ronny Wichers, Crossing Borders: Security and Privacy Issues of the European e-Passport, Advances in Information and Computer Security (2006) ISBN:9783540476993 p.152-167, 10.1007/11908739_11
  4. ISO/IEC 14443. Identification cards - Contactless integrated circuit(s) cards - Proximity cards (2001)
  5. Nohl, S.K., Evans, D., Plötz, H.: Reverse-Engineering a Cryptographic RFID Tag. In: USENIX Security Symposium, San Jose, CA, 31 July (2008)
  6. Kerckhoffs, A.: La cryptographie militaire. Journal des sciences militaires, IX, pp. 5–38, January 1983, and pp. 161–191, February 1983(1983)
  7. Nohl, K., Plötz, H.: MIFARE, Little Security, Despite Obscurity. In: Presentation on the 24th Congress of the Chaos Computer Club in Berlin (December 2007)
  8. NXP Semiconductors. MIFARE Standard 4KByte Card IC functional specification (February 2007)
Bibliographic reference de Koning Gans, G. ; Hoepman, J.-H. ; Garcia, F.D.. A practical attack on the MIFARE classic.Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications. 8th IFIP WG 8.8/11.2 International Conference, CARDIS 2008 (London, UK, 8-11 September 2008). In: Grimaud, G.; Standaert, F.-X.;, Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications. 8th IFIP WG 8.8/11.2 International Conference, CARDIS 2008, Springer-verlag2008, p. 267-282
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/67643