Implanted xEM might be bricked

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1

Hi guys,

I’ve had my xEM implanted professionally.
I have one of those Chinese blue HID/EM cloners (insert eyeroll, you know where this is going) which I’ve used to try and clone an existing HID Prox card. The read of my xEM to the handheld cloner went well, so I did a read on my HID card (which also went well), and then a write to my xEM. This didn’t show a “pass” light on the cloner. Which means it didn’t go well. Subsequent reads of the xEM also failed.

So it seems my xEM is bricked from the first try. My skin hasn’t even healed yet and it seems like the xEM might already be less useful.
I ordered a proxmark 3 which is on its way (about 3 weeks away I expect), I had this ordered before I received my xEM, but the temptation of having a cloner close by hasn’t helped.

I can’t seem to find any information here on recovering from a bricked xEM; although it seems to be very a common occurrence on this board.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
dt.shirazian

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So, I figured if there ever was a time to get the xEM out, it’d be now. While the point of penetration hadn’t healed yet.

So I did.

Literally pushed it out with my own fingers.

Removing the chip I found the blue cloner was still unable to read the xEM chip. Thinking what did I have to lose, I tried copying the same HID card to the xEM again; the cloner this time read “pass” and all subsequent reads were a “pass”.

So the cloner seems to have “unbricked” my xEM.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to put this xEM back in me. That’d be unhygienic.

I think this has been raised before, but we need a better cloner in this community.

I’m so scared to try again, even with a proxmark.

3

Yay! yes, depending on how the xEM is “bricked” it might be recoverable using the cloner. Basically it has to do with page tearing, and if your config page tears during write, then it’s usually bricked in a way that is not recoverable… but if another page in memory is torn then the cloner can typically overwrite it just fine.

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