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Hello, everyone.
Physical keys are getting replaced.
More and more by electronic alternatives.
Also using RFID, and there
are many pitfalls in implementing RFID
access systems.
And our next speaker will shed
a bit of a light into what you
can do wrong and how you can exploit it.
Please give a warm round of applause to
Ergon Topolsky.
So welcome to the RFID
Treehouse of Horror.
Well, first, a
short overview, I will
show you some centralized key
systems in Vietnam, Hanukkah key systems
in Vienna and used in Vienna, Austria.
There are apparently a lot of these
systems in Austria,
but probably in other countries too.
Then I will take a short detour on
explaining what RFID is
and how it works.
And then I tell you about my crusade
how to hack a system
city wide
access control systems.
So let's start.
Apparently, I think
that it's in other cities.
It's the same. But in Austria, we have
a lot of these centralized keys,
for example, the
the it, said Zvi Townsend,
the Vienna Ein Head Cylinder
and apparently.
So it's the unified cylinder
of 2000, apparently from a time where
everything sounded cool when you added
the 2000 to it.
So this is actually a key
used by the fire brigade and others to
open all their
backyards, to open all their
posts and gates and bars or
parking spaces.
And so
if you need a parking space or need to
deliver something does is the key to get.
There are other interesting keys.
Yes.
Actually, the regulations on
this key are like this.
You're not forced to
use a padlock that accepts this
key. But if
an emergency service needs access,
they will break your
padlock open and you will not get
rent perished.
Also, you are not allowed to use
a padlock that has
a security level that is too
high. So
basically, everyone uses this one.
The other interesting keys, for example,
this one, it's it's
it's for electrical cabinets.
Actually, it was for electrical cabinets.
But then, like with other
systems, there are some kind of
application creep similar to permission
creep, where someone aggregates
permissions over time keys
or this or actually
all kinds of solutions
tend to aggregate
additional use cases.
So, for example, this key was actually
specified somewhere in the 60s,
only for authorized personnel,
for electrical installations, and
it used indoors and outdoors.
And in the meantime, it's also used
for circuit breakers, for gas, for
heating, for water, for everything.
So basically.
Yeah, some some
power grid companies
started to use another key now.
Since 2009.
It's a magnetic key lock.
It's very complicated.
But actually every
party in the house now has a
can get the key to access
only the circuit breakers
for their level, for their floor
level and not the other ones, but
basically for all other buildings in
Vienna. They're still using this key.
And there is a third very interesting key
that when I talk to people abroad,
it first don't believe me.
It's that big key,
and this key actually
is very interesting
because it allows
you to enter almost all
the residential buildings in Vietnam.
The story behind this is like this there
was a time when a caretaker needs
to be available during daytime
and when, for example, the Post wanted
to deliver the mail, then
the caretaker would open them.
But then this obligation
was constant, and it was
also the time where all this door
intercom systems were installed.
So someone had the brilliant idea.
Let's put a small cylinder
that bypasses the
door intercom system and just opens
the door.
So also, this key is used
for garbage collection because in
Vienna, all garbage is collected in
small rooms that are accessible
either from the staircase or from the
outside.
So.
Yeah. Actually, this key,
even in the mid-nineties
when I first came across this key.
It costed like
150 or 200 euros
on the black market.
However, in recent years, the price
for this key has fallen to something like
10 15, sometimes to euros.
So basically, yeah, it's
become very popular, actually, because
after the post,
the post delivery services used this key,
then additional services
like in the case before
it got this key, some on
off as official users like fire
brigade and emergency services or
garbage collection.
Then there were supreme the Supreme Court
decision. The newspapers
made this decision or went to
the Supreme Court because they wanted to
deliver the newspaper to the front
door. And then there were a lot
of unofficial users, like
advertising distributors, broking sales
agents and maybe occasionally
also homeless people off burglars.
So since this
key is now, yeah, it's become very
popular on the black market, let's say
like so so
in since 2006,
there is a new
way to secure
your your door or
because I before I go to the next
slide, actually.
If you have the zet
key and the power key, you don't
need the key to every individual
apartment in the building.
Because when you get into the house and
turn off the power, I think that people
will come out by themselves.
I just think so since
since it's terrible, insecure
since 2006, there is a new system.
It's called game,
and the system uses
electronic chip cards or RFID cards
and tries
to to evade all the shortcomings that
these mechanical key systems has,
like blocking
stolen or lost keys,
blocking duplication of keys.
It's all the things that they
are supposed to do, and
also the new system allows the
caretaker or the property management
to distinguish between different
user groups.
It's a little bit small, but she can
define if, for example,
advertisment is allowed in the house
or not.
So as I said, 2000,
it was introduced in 2006, and
in 2009
it has had about 4000
installations in Vienna.
And last year it was
like something about 9000 installations.
And by now, this should have gone
about over 10000 installations.
And since the last year, they're also
expanding to other cities in Vienna.
The mechanical clock
actually is used in white parts
of Austria, not only Vienna.
I've seen the same key in Linz,
in Melbourne, touring in Vienna, no doubt
in Graz.
So is actually
all over in in eastern
parts of Austria.
So these are
some of the claims
that the manufacturer makes.
Yeah, the maybe it's a little bit small.
First, they say it's unkillable
and second to say they have these
testimonials like, Oh, since
I installed this lock
out, a series of break ins have been
stopped and stuff like this.
They started a big marketing crusade
against the old mechanical
system.
However, fun fact
there are a 100 percent subsidy
of the company that
is said to invented Mehanna
cookie in the 70s.
So when this key
system was installed, this electronic
system was installed in
my apartment building.
I was like.
Challenge accepted.
Later, it even became my diploma
physics.
So
now a small detour because
I had no idea about RFID
and I looked at several RFID
systems on a map, I'll show you
first how RFID
works because RFID actually
is not a standard.
It's a concept.
And depending on
how far you get back into history
and what books you read, they sometimes
say our roots are in the Second World
War for a friend of food detection
and stuff like this.
However, nowadays
you have quite a lot of different
RFID systems.
And yes, actually, before I
show you the next slide, everyone who
studied electrical engineering please
look away because
it's a really oversimplification
of the thing, but I
wanted to sort.
It's for those people who have no
idea in electrical engineering or in
physics. So basically,
you have all kinds of different
frequency, all kinds of different
systems and physical properties.
These are Rafferty's rely on.
Mostly, it's like this you have a
passive transponder that gets its
power supply and its clock.
And it's data over the air over
some kind of physical
channel and then sent something back
to our other systems, which are a semi
passive that have their own batteries,
for example, if you're
in daily life, you will mostly
find 150
125 kilohertz text called
low frequency texts and 13 megahertz
text cold called high frequency
texts.
And basically, it works
like this. Let's think of a transformer.
You probably know it from from high
school.
So basically, you know, if you
attach alternating current,
it transfers power over
a magnetic coupling to the secondary
coil. So.
Where is my point here?
So in the second picture, you see, if I
close the switch, I can transfer power
and I also transfer at the clock signal
because I have some alternating current.
The second thing is how so I
can transfer data
to the secondary call by simply
switching on and off.
The primary coil.
The second thing is, how can I transfer
data back over this transformer?
And this is done by call
by, mostly by load modulation
and the systems I talk about.
Basically, if you add additional
power things, then also
the because of conservation
of energy, the
the current on the primary coil also
is higher than before.
So by switching on
and off, some note,
you can transfer power
back to the you can transfer data
back to the primary call.
Because of distances.
Yeah, usually you have a completely
different downlink protocol than an
update protocol because they are
very different.
However, you have
now the four basic properties
that are transferred over air.
So when I remove the transformer
car and just pull it a little
bit apart, I have something like an air
transformer and now
I have a very
bad coupling. But it's enough to transfer
a little bit energy and a little bit
data over this gap.
So you can make
some kind of tech, some on this.
There are just
very, very damp RFID
tags that just have a presence or
one bit tags.
You usually find, for example, in burglar
alarms, you have text
that just produce
an identification number
and then it goes up memory text,
which has some kind of it from a flash
memory crypto attacks.
But I don't have crypto functions on it
or crypto logically
encode or encrypt the
data channel. And then you have really
wireless smart cards where you can even
put your
Java applets or card lets on.
It's some custom
applications.
Basically, there are.
A lot of ISO standards are
a lot of proprietary standards and our
ISA standards.
However, they basically only
specified a transport layer and
mostly don't specify any
encryption.
Just a short overview, which too is
professional, more or less professional
tools. You can find to
debug RFID.
So, for example, on the left side to see
the competent tool, it's
very neat device because you get like
Wireshark style traces you
see on the bottom.
However, this device costs depending on
the options, like 10 to 20
thousand euros.
Hmm. OK.
Justice Yeah.
Carpe diem attack, which costs about 600
700 euros.
It's still a lot of money.
And as the prox mark free, you probably
already heard on previous
CCC lectures
in the previous years,
which cost about 250 300
euros.
However, yeah, the proximity is
a very neat device that supports low
frequency and high frequency texts.
However, the software is kind of
put free of different styles
and different qualities.
And for what I have needed for
my project at this part,
yeah, actually, I have had to rewrite
a whole bunch of codes, codes.
And after that,
I realized that I have to go deeper
because there were some issues with with
glitches, and then I decided
to make my own
simulator, but also because
of other reasons. I will get updates
later because
yeah, you're seeing they are all very
expensive. And the thing is,
I think cheap exploit
is better exploit because
every time you have something like, Oh
yes, it's academically broken,
but you need something like 10000 euros
to break it, then every manufacturer will
sit back and say, Well, that's kind
of a security.
I mean, you've
if it's cost that much to break our
system and
you secure something that is less
valuable, valuable than
the costs of an attack, no one will do it
because so
you have to find very, very cheap attacks
to to circumvent this
to.
The savings. So
let's make a small detour
about different RFID systems
I encountered in Vietnam.
So for example, there is this
NFC ticketing system by
the violence and the local transport
company in Vietnam and.
Basically, you can touch your phone
on the sticker and then you'll
buy a pass.
Funny thing about this one, I
often get asked What's the difference
between NFC and RFID?
Is it the same because most people
use it interchangeable?
So actually, RFID
NFC is a higher protocol
and data layer on top of
the transport layer of RFID.
You can use NFC on different card
systems, but that then has
a standardized data format.
So like the Participe,
for example, or on other protocols,
so you can buy this tickets, and the
funny thing about these stickers
is
don't get distracted by all the bubbles.
The interesting thing is here on
the 25th
bubble, basically,
they use my four cards and
your risk group for
beach memories to one sector.
And the last beach memory is like the
access control with all the
keys and the
access control permissions.
And the funny thing is, well, when
they're writing down the text, they had
something like an off by one error.
They started writing the
security page
just always in the next sector,
so revealing, firstly revealing the
secret keys. And secondly, they
left the unused sectors
unprotected so you can like,
use it as a letterbox
by leaving messages for your friends, by
passing by with your phone.
Another thing is this brand
of coffee machines you will you'll find
in Austria, in universities,
at airports and and
other places.
Office buildings and they
have this electronic purse, which is
based on my fur actually
when casting
all at all and others already present
it at like five years ago, the how
crypto one works and how you can
break it. So it was like
two minutes for me to to see
what's on this token.
Then I just added one euro
to it and make a difference and
could could
actually write any any amount
of money on the stack.
I like to have.
Very interesting.
I mean, it's like five years ago.
They have no way of
disabling this or getting
a new system.
I will come to this in my conclusion
later on.
Actually, that's a very hard problem
on how to design an update path.
Also, they use some kind of key that
is derived from the
from the unique ID of the cards.
But basically, you either break this case
or you can use you I.D.
Rewritable, my four cards, which are
available from China.
Actually, I have not found any online
countermeasures like they could
make something like offline history,
check or collect the data
because once a week a technician
has to visit these
machines at least once a week and refill
it, and seven think so they could collect
all the data and then at
least blacklist these cards
that don't fit into a plausibly
check. But
they obviously don't.
Just to make sure I have not used any
of this funds over
the amount that I've charged it.
And.
Another interesting key system that
you find all over the place is
this M 41 02
based your actually
this is the kind of alarm and access
control systems you get
in in whole markets
and hardware stores
and electronic stores.
Also, I've actually these
are very, very damp keys because
as you remember the pyramid, they
only have this unique idea.
And actually what they do is
whenever they get into a reading field,
they just start to broadcast
their ID in an endless loop.
So and actually, I
also know an insurance company in
the center of Vienna that used this key
system like something like
until a year ago, then they switch to a
new one.
And there is a very nifty
chip from USMLE
that is basically a
radio frequency power function generator,
so it has a E
prom and some kind of controller.
And then if you look into the data sheet,
you will find.
Well, I can choose all kind
of modulating
schemes. I can choose
different data types.
I can choose different
devices.
So basically, it's a function generator
and by pure chance, you can
program it that way that
it produces the same
signal that's an original chip
would produce.
I don't know why it will developed not
something like this, but it's very
convenient device and you find
like this Chinese copying machines,
you just have to put your
original kit out and put this rewritable
at metal chip there, and
it's copied.
Also, confronted with the low security
of this huge city based
systems of the proper
property or building management often
states, well, yes, maybe it's not
that secure, but it has one
certain feature.
We are very proud of and it's very
convenient. It's blacklisting certain
keys when they get stolen or when people
lose their permission to enter
the building.
So I thought interesting.
Is it really like this?
I mean, OK, you have now something
like 48 or 64
bit keys, space and
searching. It would take like hundreds
of years. So is it?
But is it really that secure?
So I looked at the key system
that basically works the same
at my university.
It's for the
technical laboratories, electrical
engineering laboratories.
And what I found is so
I spoke with the administrator and she
gave me an anonymized
copy of the access
control database.
And then I make some very
easy statistical analysis.
But just making a histogram of it
and basically it's a little
bit small, but this is the
this is like you plot the key
range on the x
axis and you see, well, basically almost
all the keys are in one range.
So I zoom in and I zoom in and
I see like, Oh, they have like
apparently they bought like five batches
of cards.
And where they are produced, they are
numbered
one by one.
So basically, that's that's
somehow ineffective
when you're blocking the are because when
the car gets stolen and you block
disunity, I have to talk
to you on the left. So when you're
just taken, you added this one
off, up or down.
You have a 93 percent probability
of finding another valid uad.
And with two up and down, you have like
98 percent probability.
And basically, if you are for this,
for this alarm systems or access control
systems, you buy in a
in a hardware store.
It's probably the numbers
are not that small, but still you have
like you get one card and, you know,
more or less the range where to look for
other cards because obviously
they also bought this
cards in batches.
So one thing that vendors
of the manufacturers of this card should
really do is randomized you at ease
when they really sell like this
unsecure systems.
So at least randomize it.
As nice project
mates by musician Eric,
you have he done a lot of talks
in the recent years on the CCC
is.
This sniffing device actually
uses just a USB audio adapter
to sniff this 125 kilohertz
text. This is possibly because
modulated data is like in the range of
four kilohertz and, well, you
know, sampling frames, so
you need at least eight kilohertz, or
maybe just six kilohertz.
And you can sample it with your audio.
So this is but this is just a sniffing
device.
I wanted to Bill, so I wanted to build
something as a side project for
my talk. It's not finished, actually.
But the idea was, well, let's build a
device that just sweeps through an
I.D. range
and it should be cheap.
So the idea is, I just take
your phone and use the
audio output to a small
socket with a transistor, and it
then modulates the signal and just
sweeps through all the units
in a certain range.
Actually, I wanted to present it to here,
but it wasn't finished by
now, but I probably release
it in two or three weeks.
There are some
key facts with it because you have no
return channel. You're not cynical
or you're not.
Yeah, you're not synchronized with the
sender.
However, with my my calculations
showed that you only have to guess
the carrier frequency with a
within one percent and the
rest should be done by the Manchester
recording, which is self synchronizing.
So this should circumvent like
a lot of this whole market systems.
I would like to talk about how I
why I think that is all this insecure
systems will not go away that fast.
Even with so simple hacks
like this,
I forgot to mention something on the
previous night here
because actually, if you look at this
block diagram,
there is this analog front end.
And when you want to build your own
simulator for techs,
you have to make an analog frontend.
And actually, there's a lot
of literature literature on
how to build RFID readers, but
almost none on how to build text.
Interestingly, however,
as I show you later, it's actually
not that complicated because also the
manufacturers want to
make cheap attacks,
and so they just rely on very
simple digital
circuits and don't want to mess around
with with hybrid circuits.
So let's get back to the Big East
system.
So first step is reconnaissance.
I need to get it to our unit.
I don't want it to steal the one that's
in my apartment building.
And I also don't own
real estate that could be upgraded
to the new system.
So I contacted a general
distributor.
But they saw.
They told me, well, actually, it's only
sold by locksmiths and electricians,
but they can name me some,
some wholesale distributor,
downstream distributor of
wholesale partner.
And with the reference that I'm coming
from this general distributor
actually at the downstream distributor
or down at the wholesale partner actually
sold me one.
And I dressed up a little bit and said,
OK, I'm I'm building on, I want to
upgrade my building and I even
got a discount because I was a new
customer and everything.
Actually, last year, I found there's
now a Web shop that also sells them, but
back then there wasn't.
So now I had this hardware device
that took it apart, looked at it,
identified some components and saw, OK,
they're using some Texas Instruments
chips for the RF
front end. So I built a very
small sniffer.
And yeah,
you see it very small.
It's just a so-called envelope
detector.
And I could start it.
This is a trade oscilloscope trace.
You see some bits here appearing out
of two of the.
Signal terrible.
Basically, it's just a diet and a
low pass filter.
So actually, you could start decoding
some bits, and it reassured
me that I have to do with some cards
that is based on ISO 1500
693 standard.
So the next thing was
how to get real user cards.
I mean, OK,
for example, I could start as a volunteer
at the Red Cross and then work my
way up to the point where I get handed
over a. But this takes like maybe
a year.
Hmm.
Maybe, maybe I know someone
at such an organization
and he can borrow me a cart, but
I don't know. So I cannot
do this, you know, maybe I can
buy a long range reader.
However, long range readers are
quite big and power consuming
and heavy and very expensive, like
they start at €2000.
And this is a picture of
such skates.
And seriously, I don't have to say my
name, so, but what I have money
for was some kind of, let's call it
midrange reader. It's like a reader
that's 25 centimeters
in diameter.
And
I packed a small microcontroller and a
very big battery pack on
it and a
small external memory
and went to my post office.
And really, for about five
euros day, I could convince
them to send this
parcel back home to me.
So while it was in transit, it's simply
recorded all the keys every few seconds
it's recorded, all the keys in vicinity.
Also, I didn't trust that Austin
post very much, so I put
a very big battery
on it.
I didn't know how long it takes them.
Yeah, and it worked on the first try.
So
I I had some.
I had the key something.
Yeah. So therefore I could show
that everyone can get samples
of this key cards without
knowing anyone or investing a lot
of money.
Just a side note, what would happen if
someone found this parcel like
suspicious and
reported it to the police
or something that I would probably have
been woken up by anti-terror squad?
So that's why I've put a small note
into the parcel
saying, OK, it's an experiment.
Here's my phone number.
However, it didn't happen.
So the next thing was, yeah, I've
built a small sniffer and and I want to
extend it to an emulator, and
then I wanted to do some some
testing like fuzzing and systematic
testing with door opening unit.
And actually, it was kind
of interesting thing because programing
such thing is quite tricky because you
have to keep
the timing exactly to the original.
And actually, you are started to program
with Oscilloscope behind you
because every time you receive something
like, in this case, this
is the bits that's coming in or
the D
modulated signal, and actually
it's the modulated signal.
And then I have to modulate it.
And actually, you start like
interweaving different loops
like you receive
a bit and you try like to decode
it and then also
to to check some calculation, all while
you're receiving.
And because
afterwards, when the request ends,
you have actually almost no time
to prepare an answer.
You have to do all the things while
you're receiving this.
And also for sending it like I've
misused to PVM generators
on this very cheap microcontroller
that, like trigger
themselves.
So the one triggers the other and the
other way around.
And it was quite an experience, but
actually, yeah,
I could then use this for systematic
tests and use the emulation and
cart replay attacks,
and I've designed it that way.
This is my prototype yonder, right?
With the. You can see here is
the original door opening unit.
This is my microcontroller.
This is the analog front
end and discarded antennas once tacked
on another.
And actually, it's
the whole set of cost, like less than 20
euros.
I can show you briefly, show you how
it looks like it's actually quite simple,
I was surprised that then the front end
actually isn't that hard.
I mean, I've never studied studied
electrical engineering,
but basically you have here your resonant
circuit, your rectify
it and then you have an output transistor
here and an input buffer.
And yeah, that's everything.
And then you feed it into your
microcontroller and
write your program
with with all the
testing equipment. Now I had I could
build a model of the inner working.
So a bit like this flowchart
showing how it works,
how the checks are because
it's kind of reiterating the
existing cards.
And also it
has some kind of brute force protection.
So every time I meet a test,
I have to simulate the removal of the
card, which takes a little bit of time.
But at the end, I could analyze
what different cards that are and how
it supposedly works.
So basically, there are four
types of cards.
There is no use of cards
with encrypted data in it.
They have, like three sectors, sectors
which always have like three memory
pitches.
They are just MasterCard ownership card
and programing card to work together.
You need the ownership card with the
programing card to to
make changes to the configuration of the
device. And then there is the something
there is the use of
cards like are these 10 groups?
I showed one on on the earliest nights
and there is one group that's
called by cards or in former times,
it's called test cards.
I looked it up using the internet
wayback machine from
from the vendor's homepage.
And the interesting thing
is the first sector
is unencrypted that just has some kind of
checksum and second and
third sector are somehow
encrypted based on the unity
of the card.
However, yeah, the bulk not only
uses the first sector,
so it's completely unencrypted.
For what reason, ever?
So actually, there are two
main findings the ball court and the
rest of you, and the second one is that
the manufacturer assumed that the UAE
is not duplicate the bill and not
changeable.
So that's yeah, the wrong assumption
that the meteor.
I also did some B.S., I'm not a crypto
analyst, but I did some basic
tests and brute forcing, but they
didn't reveal any much.
So now it's time for evaluation.
After all, it was my diploma physics.
So I went like to
110 house entrances
in Vienna and tested it, tested them.
So basically, 92 percent of
residential houses in
Indiana use either the old mechanical
key or the new electronic key
and.
The out of this
nine of does, ninety two
percent, 16 percent use the new
electronic variant.
So actually, I was able
to transfer to bowl concert where old
KeePass.
And 43 percent of
the installations could
be opened with to keep us.
So what could be more Austrian
than a ski pass?
So the costs of this attacks like
two two euros deposit
in the ski resort of your own choice.
Also, I made a small
Android app for my NFC phones to
reprogram ski passes.
I must say the Android R RFID
NFC up is really terrible.
Yeah.
So now, as I said, 43
percent could be opened with a
reprograms, 80 percent, 93 percent
could be opened with car simulator.
What's with the seven percent rest?
I'm not really sure because
it was like, Yeah, I didn't know.
Maybe the lock is broken or maybe
some other thing I couldn't test for
this. Also, it was quite funny because
I was a little bit afraid, OK, I'm going
there around in the city and testing all
the entrances, so I made up
some kind of cover story.
I got this,
I got this workers check jackets to
look like a technician.
But but actually, no one cares.
So, yeah, as I already
said, the cardinal later can be billed
for something like a little bit less than
20 euros. Even if you have to
produce your own PCP in a petrol
form for 10 pieces and then buy
all the all the parts
of less than 20 years.
Which shows that thank you, which shows
that you can actually circumvent
the new system with
actually almost the same amount
of money that you could circumvent
the old mechanical system.
So no additional security at all,
actually.
And a funny thing I found is
on their homepage.
I didn't mentioned the blacklisting
feature, so.
And there are different variants of this
lock and the basic variant.
It's called basic
costs like 300 euros,
including the installation,
and there is a 600 euro variant
that has a blacklisting feature and
you have to buy this. Additionally, you
have to buy
have a yearly fee annual fee
for this blacklisting feature.
And this is actually this is a picture
from the Facebook page
showing how they update the blacklist.
So.
If you read the contract now, it's not
you don't want any more white, there is
only one black list update per year
included.
So actually, even if you have this
premium look
and you'll pay for the updates, a
stolen key, even for one,
for non-recognition, even if you don't
know all the stuff I told you about now
in the last minutes, Diski
still has a value because it maybe
gets blocked
a year later.
Also, the basic devices don't have
a blacklist feature at all.
I mean, come on, seriously, it's 2013.
They are like just modules for 20
or 30 dollars.
You could build a built in
one in every block, but
OK.
So just for a black
box analysis of the biggie,
a key system, the four
main points are the circumventing.
The cost of the materials are more or
less the same.
Like the mechanical system, there's no
additional security offered,
no practical use.
Then they used an inappropriate card
format. Assuming that the UID is fixed
and not Clonmel,
the the basic design is somehow
broken and also their default
configuration, like up until 2009,
it was like the default configuration to
enable the bulk card.
Later, they changed it.
And also that the blacklist features just
once a year.
That's ridiculous.
However, so customers should
actually should not expect any
significantly higher security
of the new system than of
the old system.
And it could care less or something
like this.
So the other question that
comes to your mind probably
is why will crappy security
solutions accompany us
and have such a long lifetime?
By the way, all this
things that we show that are broken don't
go away.
And the first
answer is users don't care.
Because you always get
to smoke and mirrors and and
nice marketing
sayings from the companies.
And every time you present
an attack, let that cost like €10000,
the company will say, Yeah, well, see
€10000 just
protect things that are less valuable
and no one will use this attack.
Because, yeah, don't
attack us are not insane.
The other thing is that like
in this in this sample with the coffee
machine, this is a prime sample, also
this one.
Vendors somehow did not realized
that the need to build in an update plan
in mind in software for every one of us,
it's clear for like ten years
now that whenever you have a security
solution, you are in the kind of arms
race we've seen with the
dark side of the world.
So you need some kind of update mechanism
and update path, and
you cannot make online
updating
of your program code in heart to that
easy. However, for example,
black lists could be updated
by GSM and
but also like with with the coffee
machine. If you design this
electronic purse like to be modular
and to have an update plan that
when you decide to change your card
format, you first replace
your your reader modules
and then step by step,
replace all the cards in the field and
then you switch to the new format
and something like this.
If you build this in from the very
beginning, then you have a chance
to do it. Otherwise,
you will will face
very severe costs, and this is something
that people that buy
the system should be aware of
that and should ask what?
What is the lifetime, the
supposed lifetime and what will?
Thank you. What what is the way
to upgrade it?
Because no security
solution lasts forever?
Actually, as a nice example, with
PTV cards in Germany,
which have been broken multiple times and
like Primera, learned it the hard
way. But actually, it looks like that
now. For several years, they
they learned how to do it
because
yeah, you need a way to
change, you know, some kind of lifespan
for your security solution and you are
prepared to change it
after this lifespan.
And if the security solutions
stays unbroken for far longer time, then
you have some.
You make money out of it a little bit.
You have to price it in, of course, from
the beginning.
And if not, you should be.
You should should have all this
procedures up in place to change all
your cards and to change to the
encryption system.
Also, the other thing is that,
like I mentioned before, the application
creep that.
Solutions that are in place
are then later misused for
other things that are not designed for
and you should.
Always be
aware that are probably not up
to this high standards that you need for
a new solution.
So to sum
up.
So why am I doing this and generally
security is not verifiable, only
falsified.
So you have if you have
a new security solution,
you have to go through a series
of qualified attacks
and only if you survive them,
you can assume a certain level of
security.
And also, it's very I think it's very
important to provide cheap
exploits that are practicable, otherwise
windows will always claim some kind of
practical security.
As I mentioned earlier.
So
my last word is the cheaper
and exploits the better.
And I hope you had a lot of fun and,
yeah, built cheap exploits.
Yes or no for the question, I
probably first question will be, yes,
I've informed the vendor of
the system food served at
Cert authorities in Austria.
Thank you for this very entertaining
talk.
If you have questions for the speaker,
please do line up at the hall microphones
one two three four.
And up there as well.
While you do that, we have one question
from the internet.
OK.
I don't really know if you already said
it. What happens with the big cheese
system? If you have a power shortage in
the building or if the box where the
system is in doesn't have any power?
Yeah, well, then you still have to use
the mechanical keys.
But so far the
emergency services won't get in.
But a normal
user of a normal
apartment or an office building still
gets in because he has his mechanical
key.
Microphone one, please.
Hi.
Just one information, one question
in France, we have the same system
since since 97.
So it's pretty old now.
And for the user
keys for like the plus guy
and the other put a restriction.
So those kind of
keys can be used between like after
2pm.
So maybe some of I'd like to know
if you encountered this kind of
control measures might be some of the
doors you can open.
Well, you know, like New York wasn't
allowed to open this door at that time.
So this is a fear.
If I had just seven percent
of systems
that I was asking if it was like
something that was no, because in France,
this is, oh, it works.
Yeah, yeah, that that the premium
variant of the system actually supports
our clock based access controls.
So maybe this was the case
because it try to win versus
infringements. We have a lot of old
systems that don't work like this.
So yeah, it's still easy to open
microphone to please.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for doing the exploit.
You mentioned that you informed the
companies. So what was their reply being
from Vienna? And it sounds like it to be
sure if like if you're losing.
Yeah, actually, I've informed the Senate
80 people,
and they informed the company, and
like I've wrote one page of
how I did this exploit and some
possible solutions have the.
What are the other car systems they could
probably switch to and how
they probably could make it?
The only reaction of the manufacturer was
like, they don't believe that this was
an independent researcher.
This is probably some other
company.
That's so that
that is a challenge
expected for me, so I will try
to replicate that is your theory
and your thesis available in the
Bibliotheque?
Yeah, it's available.
Okay, thank you.
Microphone four, please.
I um, can't you just
emulate these cards with
your cell phone?
Do you need a ski pass?
Yeah. Well, the chip that is built in
an Android NFC phones only
has an immolation feature for ISO
fourteen 400
43 cards
and also up until the very last
Android version. It wasn't enabled.
You could use CyanogenMod
and then use it, but actually it cannot
emulate this system that I
have have to deal here.
So, no, not with with the chip
that it's built in and usually Android
phones.
Microphone seven up there, please.
Yeah, thank you very much for this.
Great.
Uh, yeah,
that's what I wanted
to ask is you use
to one hundred twenty five
kilohertz systems?
And you mentioned the long range
readers that are available.
Do you know about long range
readers for 13 megahertz
systems?
Yeah. Well, that one hundred twenty
five kilohertz system
was just a small detour to show your
other systems.
The biggest system works on 13
megahertz.
And yes, actually,
I found a company in Germany
that sells them like form.
That's 2000, starting at two thousand
euros.
There are some physical constraints.
So the first thing is, as a rule of
thumb, most literature says
that
you only get a distance like one and
a half of the diameter of the antenna.
And the second thing is there is a hard
physical limit.
That's because this
magnetic coupling coupling only works
in the so-called near field of antenna.
So when you move out of the new field,
there are several models how to calculate
the new field, but in worst case, it's
like free meters.
Yeah, but
yeah.
Another question from our signal angel.
So why are the commercially available
RFID debugging tools so expensive?
Is that due to a monopoly position
or are they really
that expensive due to the components
used?
It's basically no, it's not
the components.
I'm sure it's not the components.
It's basically a design
work. And because
your prices on the market are
are determined by what customers
like to pay or
yeah, what what they pay and not
how much it thing costs.
So yeah,
you have this developer tools and a
company that like
wants to develop a new system and says,
like, OK, I need something to
test my equipment with and
I could have a technician work for
like one month on
it. Or I can buy something for
ten thousand euros and have my project
finished a month earlier and don't have
to pay my technicians.
So for them, maybe a €10000 is
acceptable.
We have time for two more questions for
microphone one.
Hello.
I wanted to ask a different
question.
Right at the start of your talk,
you showed pictures of some of the keys
for the old system.
Yeah. And I'm wondering those
symbolic pictures are those the actual
keys used because especially
the one the third key
you showed looked like maybe
five pins or something.
So it looked like some
analog Treehouse of Horror.
I'm not you mean that yeah,
I have this picture with 125
kilohertz tanks, probably, yeah.
I mean, the physical, the old system
with the physical keys and locks.
Oh, OK.
So if if this is the actual key.
Yes. Yes, it is.
OK.
I mean, yeah.
So this basically lock pickers having
I didn't show the sides, so it's not
enough to make the key
out of just off the picture.
I wouldn't trust that.
Yeah.
Actually, actually, there's a nice
controversy about wherever, whatever
it's legal to copy this key,
it's mechanical keys, but it's probably
for not a talk for another 15 minutes.
But I wrote about it in my master's
thesis.
Thank you. I'm going to ask you, please
give him a warm round of applause.