New NFC implant chip types

AlexSmith

This is a thread about a number of new type of NFC implants I've been working on. I didn't want to spam the form with a new thread for every new chip I release, so this will be a mega thread which I'll update as I release new NFC implants. (I don't want spam the forum with marketing posts, but on the other hand, people are interested in new tech developments, and I am releasing state of the art new implants)

"Magic" Mifare NFC implants

Last year I released the cloneable RFID implants, but why stop at RFID cloning? Being able to clone NFC chips is the next logical stop.

Those of you who follow me on twitter will already know I've been working on these for a while now, but they are finally finished, so I thought people here would interested.

Mifare Classic chips are an older sort of high frequency NFC chip, they only partially meet the NFC standards, so some phones can read them and some can't, for this reason I would normally recommend people get a NTAG216 NFC implant because it fully meets the NFC standard and so is readable on all NFC devices.

However, Mifare Classic is very widely used, so it would be useful to have an implant which could copy existing Mifare Classic cards. Dangerous Things have sold vanilla Mifare Classic implants in the past (although they are currently out of stock). However these chips have a hard coded UID, if you want to use it to 'clone' an existing Mifare Classic card, you could only copy the data on the card, not the card ID (UID).

Mifare Classic cards with changeable UIDs have been available for a while now, but in credit card sizes, not an implantable form factor. In hacker circles they care called "magic" cards because they bypass the manufacture restrictions. I wanted to fix this situation and make a Mifare Classic implant which fully supports cloning.

I got some "magic" ICs and cut them down to fit in 3mm diameter bio-safe borosilicate glass vials, I then attached a coil antenna around a ferrite rod (this is how all antennas in implantable chips are made), then sealed the tube. The implants were then placed in 9.5 gauge needles and sterilized in medical sterilization pouches.

These are rather large implants at 3x18mm (the same size as the Firefly implants), but can still be implanted using the same standard procedure used for implanting other RFID chips. They are available now on cyberise.me.  These can be read and written to using normal NFC readers which support NXP Crypto1 protocol, in order to change the UID you can either use a proxmark3, or an NFC usb writer and the free libnfc software. There are a range of USB writers which work, but to make things easy I've ordered a batch of readers which I know work with this chip (available here (yes, you can get them cheaper if you buy directly from the supplier, but they don't ship outside New Zealand)).

Currently I only have a few of the available, but I have ordered more, so don't worry if you miss out. As you can see in the pictures, one end of the implant is oddly shaped, this is an artifact of the sealing process. It's not ideal, and to begin with I was worried it would cause problems, but 8 of these implants have been implanted in beta testers for between 6 and 3 months, and there have been no problems reported.

AlexSmith

Mifare Ultralight implants

I've had some Mifare Ultralight NFC implants made. These are similar to the normal NTAG NFC implants, they are the same 2x12mm size. But they have smaller data size, only 64 bytes. Still enough to store a URL or contact information, but considerably smaller than the 888 bytes of the NTAG chips.

There are two reasons why you might choose these chips over the normal NTAG chips. One is cost, I've had a number of people complains about the cost of the NTAG implants. These implants are an option if you can't afford the larger size chips.

The other reason to choose these chips is the chip type. Mifare Ultralight chips are often used in hotel access systems, so if you are trying to interface with a system which supports Mifare Ultralight but not NTAG chips, this could be what you are looking for.

(Note these have just been made and are currently shipping to me from the manufacture, so you won't actually be able to order them for a couple of weeks, I just wanted to announce them now)

That's it for now, but I've got a number of other NFC chip types I'm working on, I'll post in this thread when they are done.

AlexSmith

I'd like to input from others. The Magic implant mentioned in the first post has been working out quite well. I've been trying to expand this beyond just Mifare Classic 1k, I have some Magic Mifare Classic 4k, Magic Mifare Ultralight, and Magic Mifare Ultralight C chips I've been trying to make implants with. 

But I hit a problem. The ICs used in these 3 other magic chips are different, they don't work with the small coil antennas used in the implants. Nothing I've tried has been able to get the chips to work the small antennas. The best I've been been able to do is get it working with a long narrow antenna ~0.5x5x40mm in size. 

I'm pretty unhappy with this, but I really don't know how to overcome this problem. If you have a suggestion to decrease the antenna size, please let me know, but until I have a way to make the antenna smaller, I've decided it's better the make the implants available with a large size than have them not available at all. 

So the question is, should I go with a glass or silicone coating?

PS: the Magic Mifare Ultralight and Ultralight C chips can be used to clone cards often used in hotels and some public transport systems.

Jupiter

I'll admit to not being aware there were so many different varieties of RFID chips, but now that I am...

Assuming one were able to implant them spaced slightly apart, would there be interference issues caused by having different kinds (also interested in what happens if you have two of the same kind with different data) in a small area (one hand)?

It'd be slightly more inconvenient for reaching certain things, don't know exactly what sort of things you'd use them with, but what about forearm implants (particularly if those antennas are 4 cm long)?

Glass vs Silicone, no idea. Assuming there's no risk of them cracking due to impact, I'd say Glass, just because (from what I know) they tend to be smoother thus less contaminatable than silicone, but I have no implants of either variety and haven't done anything I'd call "extensive" research in the area.