I’m all for documenting things. But here it’s just a matter of dropping something into a jar and waiting until it’s done 
Hmmm @amal do you think a 17 pF transit pass is a good candidate for conversion into the classic wedge/flex form factor (for installation with a 4g needle)?
what form factor is your transit pass in?
Can you back-light the chip?
Can you take a photo to share?
What chip is it? (TagInfo)
The reason I ask is, if it is a Mifare classic… You may be able to grab a FlexM1 
It’s a standard credit card sized card.
I though about the FlexM1 as well. but it is a Mifare Desfire EV2 (so cloning is out of the question).
Yeah that is still an option
Not yet 
Hmm… 7 days for a letter. The more things change, the more things stay the same at the US postal service.
First world problems
How dare it take more than 7 days for something to travel halfway around the world lol
2 Likes
Not really: postal services have existed for hundreds of years the world over and are pretty much a sorted out problem by now. I sent a simple, non-oversized envelope from a large Finnish city with perfect public services to a large US city that should have perfect public services also. 7 days isn’t right, and the reason is probably to be found in the phrase containing “US” and “public service”.
I’ve been rather busy taking a variety of busses from different bus operators on different route in the area, and the readers might be a concern. Some of them read from half an inch away, some need the card flat against the surface. Also, whatever they write into the chip takes quite some time to write - something like 2 seconds - and it sends 3 beeps when it fails, which seems to happen a lot on some routes, from what I could see watching other passengers getting onboard and having to retry presenting their card to the reader.
That’s with a full size card. I’ll be curious to see how the converted chip fares (if indeed it can be converted), especially from a distance corresponding to the chip under a layer of skin. It might be a bit of a struggle, trying to find the sweet spot and having to wait 2 seconds each time to know if it worked, particularly since the driver won’t leave the stop until all the passengers have presented a valid card.
Due to the similaraties between our, I am pretty confident it can.
Regarding the reading / coupling.
If yours is the same as mine, For some reason they are de-tuned ( To stop accidental scans? To make sure you have to present them closely to readers for visual inspection of staff???
From Amal
Possibly. But I just think it’s a limitation of the hardware chosen to go in the busses. I mean at the end of the day, the readers work fine for the purpose, which is to let passengers with the official transit card in more or less smoothly. They were never meant for implantees.
There is something else that I learned when I used to deal with customer: it’s entirely possible that they deliberatly chose hardware that requires a hard slap of the card on the reader to effect a read. That’s what non-NFC-aware people would expect, because they do that when they pay at the store. If the reader started reading and beeping from an inch away, it might confuse people. Also, with the card against the reader, there’s less chance of moving and interrupting the transaction once it’s started - which, like I said, seems to be rather lengthy.
Anyway, I expect a massive hit in performance with a converted chip. I’m just hoping it won’t be a show-stopper. In fact, I’m planning to put the chip in its chloro pouch inside a thick wallet to simulate the chip under my skin and do a lot of tests in the local busses before implanting it - with my backup travel card in my pocket in case it fails of course 
Mixed good news: I took an early bus to work this morning at the head station. The bus arrived empty, but the driver stopped 30 yards short of the stop. Odd…
I boarded the bus, sat down, and to my amazement, the driver left the bus and rushed to the burger joint he had in fact parked next to, to get a coffee while keeping an eye on his vehicle.
That was my chance: I walked up to the terminal and presented my flexM1 to the reader this and that way, hoping to elicit a reaction - a beep or something, confirming a successful coupling. But… nothing. Nada.
I did get a reaction from the driver though: when he saw me goofing around with the terminal, he rushed back to his bus. I casually returned to my seat when I spotted him, and he eyed me funny when he climbed back onboard
The good news is, on my way back home this afternoon, I presented a full-size M1k to the reader - pretending to have fished the wrong card out of my pocket absentmindedly - and got no reaction neither.
So hope is not lost.
i think you need to use a headless proxmark3 rdv4 in sniff mode and find out what’s happening with the standard card… see if it is looking for backdoor cards… maybe a gen2 will work better?
Your genuine card and conversion are DESFire EV1 correct?
Yeah I think this was just a test if the flex antenna works.
If it would error out at a M1 card but not M1 implant, it would be a coupling issue.
1 Like
Ah, I missed that, but that would explain the
I kinda hoped a Magic Mifare would have had a better chance of raising a big alarm from the terminal - as in, if indeed it tests for the backdoor command, a regular Mifare might be ignored while a suspicious magic one would not.
To be honest, I don’t think it does any of that. It probably just ignores anything that’s not kosher.
I don’t think so The driver is literally 3 feet away from the reader. Even a headless PM is gonna look really dodgy. Even the driver this morning could see clearly what was going on while he was enjoying his coffee in the joint across the sidewalk.
Exactly. I would have liked to have had a clear error from the flexM1 - meaning it coupled for sure - but at least I didn’t get one solely from the full size card - meaning only it can couple. As I got no feedback from either, I can draw no conclusion.
I could try with a DESFire card tomorrow, see if the reader gets a bit more interested in that. But that won’t tell me nothing more, since I don’t have a flexDF implanted.