4 ms·

That's a great question, so I tried it. Its pretty uncommon to be issued an NFC card from a bank in the US so I stuffed my wallet with a Metro card and a couple

That's a great question, so I tried it. Its pretty uncommon to be issued an NFC card from a bank in the US so I stuffed my wallet with a Metro card and a couple Hilton hotel keys. I used NFC Tools on my Pixel 2 and tried to read the wallet. The cards do scan, but you never know which one you will get. I put my wallet in my pocket and tried to read it - there is absolutely no way someone is going to read my wallet in my pocket without me noticing (using a standard reader). I needed direct contact and had to move the phone around to get a read. If the wallet were inside a purse or bag, forget about it. Keep your Metro card or an NFC hotel key on the outside of your payment cards and chances of getting scanned reduce quite sharply (based on my small non-scientific experiment).

rasz 8y ago
backpack sized reader will pick up your cards (all of them) from 10-30cm, standing next to a person is enough.
monocasa 8y ago
Relying on non tuned antennas for your test is a mistake. Check out the war driving peeps who connect to WiFi networks from miles away. Your phone's antenna is intentionally not tuned well to avoid picking up random devices that it's not near. When I was working on an RFID board, we intentionally tuned it for such poor distance that the FCC was willing to not call it an intentional transmitter, but instead one half of an air core transformer. That's pretty standard for the product space.
londons_explore 8y ago
Modified readers the size of a briefcase can read NFC cards from around 300 feet away. I can totally imagine someone leaving such a briefcase on a busy shopping street, then providing 'free money to anyone' via an app and the internet.
opless 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUduHIygbY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUduHIygbY8 This decon talk mostly targets 125KHz readers, but to read 13.56MHz NFC MiFare/EMV cards you use can still get COTS components. Also most of the proxmark 3 devices and friends, have external (amplified) antennas which certainly can do remote attacks such as the one described. Also, NFC cards will be on the rise in the USA given the introduction in 2017. Most of the rest of the world have had NFC payment cards for a decade.

rasz 8y ago

backpack sized reader will pick up your cards (all of them) from 10-30cm, standing next to a person is enough.

monocasa 8y ago

Relying on non tuned antennas for your test is a mistake. Check out the war driving peeps who connect to WiFi networks from miles away. Your phone's antenna is intentionally not tuned well to avoid picking up random devices that it's not near. When I was working on an RFID board, we intentionally tuned it for such poor distance that the FCC was willing to not call it an intentional transmitter, but instead one half of an air core transformer. That's pretty standard for the product space.

londons_explore 8y ago

Modified readers the size of a briefcase can read NFC cards from around 300 feet away. I can totally imagine someone leaving such a briefcase on a busy shopping street, then providing 'free money to anyone' via an app and the internet.

opless 8y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUduHIygbY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUduHIygbY8 This decon talk mostly targets 125KHz readers, but to read 13.56MHz NFC MiFare/EMV cards you use can still get COTS components. Also most of the proxmark 3 devices and friends, have external (amplified) antennas which certainly can do remote attacks such as the one described. Also, NFC cards will be on the rise in the USA given the introduction in 2017. Most of the rest of the world have had NFC payment cards for a decade.