Hello,
I’m facing this “chipped” world for the first time ever and I got million questions.
First at all I gotta say I know nothing so far. For example I can’t understand how to program a Vivokey spark 2 and stuff like that. However the question of my new topic is; should I buy a spark 2 or wait for the apex to be released? What are the real differences between those two? The things I hope I’ll be able to do my future implants are stuff like: lock and unlock doors/devices/cars/gates etc., payment, crypto wallet, keep important information.
Thanks to everyone who’s gonna waste some time to reply me back
Lock and Unlock doors - this depends on the lock in use, and the access you have to program the system. You might consider a Magic chip so that you can change the UID, and a T55xx for the same purpose for low frequency.
Devices/cars/gates are similar answers. Depending on just what you are trying to do you might want LF or NFC chips. The Vivokey spark can be used with the authenticator app for TOTP token access. The Apex should have additional authentication capabilities.
Any chip with space can be used to keep some important information but if you want to encrypt it then GPG/PGP and the Apex should be a good choice.
For payment Vivokey Apex may, or may not be able to be used for payments (for non technical reasons). Purewrist conversion in the US or WalletMor in Europe are your current best options for payments.
As for a crypto wallet, again I would look to the Apex for that.
For maximum flexibility you could consider a Magic Card, a NeXT and an Apex implant. That should cover you for pretty much anything that you could come across.
Spark 2 can also be used for all Apple Shortcuts automation possibilities. Which on iPhone is a surprisingly large amount of possibilities such as: HomeKit control, hardware control, and even play games.
This question has been asked in various forms before on the forum so I will summerize; The primary purpose of the Spark 2 is to be used with the VivoKey platform, APIs, and eventual services that will launch (likely 2022) and be part of the platform. The Apex Flex can also be used with the VivoKey platform, APIs, and eventual services, but can also run autonomous java card applications.
If you must choose just one, then I would wait for the Apex. However, there is utility in linking multiple implants with the same VivoKey profile. Backup access, for one, is useful.
As for payment, the Apex will be capable of performing tokenzied EMV payments, but this feature will not be activated. We have not received approval to perform payment transactions on any payment networks thus far (mastercard, visa, etc.) and until the Apex Flex implant is allowed to perform payment transactions on those networks, those features will remain disabled.
Thank you for your response, I kinda know what this means but would you please tell me about it in the easiest possible way? Like the advantages. Thank you @amal and all the other people that helped me out. Really appreciate it @StephenBoose@Zwack
What I mean by backup access is that your VivoKey profile has no username and password… Access is through chip scan only. Well, chip scan and a PIN code. Even though we strive to make the best most reliable products, sometimes failures happen in the field. If you only have one chip associated with your profile, and that chip fails or is damaged in some way, then access to that profile and all the potential services it links to are also lost. If you have more than one ship associated with your profile, you can just simply scan a different ship to get access to your profile and or services
Not really hah… the way OpenID Connect works for members is that any requestor can use VivoKey as an IdP (identity provider), you just make a client ID and secret for it within the VivoKey app and away you go.
When I say “services” I mean things that we are working on creating and launching. They will be visible in the VivoKey app dashboard, where I think there is one lonely link there now
What exactly are autonomous Java Card Applications? I’ve heard the phrase thrown around and I imagine it could do a lot of cool things, but I really don’t have any good idea of specific examples of what it might be able to do. Can it run its own code? Is it able to run something on the device that’s connecting to it? If I think about the Soon™ Cyberpunk future, what would be examples of what this could do?
~ Jamie
It really just means what it sounds like. The chip can run touring complete software. You can code an application in Java card and deploy it to the chip over NFC. Those applications will run on the chip autonomously and separately from any online platform like VivoKey. This means the applications you deploy to the chip are entirely separate from anything to do with us. It also means if something doesn’t exist that you want to run on the chip, it can be created by you or someone else.
A great example is the Tesla keycard applet. It didn’t exist, until someone reverse engineered the key card application, then it did.
Another example is storage of public-private key pairs and on-chip encryption algorithms. By generating these key pairs in the chip, and never releasing the private key from the chip, and performing encryption and decryption functions in the chip, you can rest assured that no third party has the private key. This is useful for everything from Bitcoin wallets to U2F and Fido authentication applications.
I got a couple of new questions for you guys (I won’t create a new topic - should I next time?)
Anyway, the first question is; I’m a noob about not only microchips but almost everything - even if i learn pretty fast - is that a problem? Like almost all the noobs I own a Mac; can I do everything or should i have a windows? where can i learn how to use, program, etc. on Mac OS?
Thank you
There is not much information on youtube but you can read through the wikis here on the forum. What tools do you have to play around with? Do you have an acr122u or proxmark3? or are you just looking to do some fun stuff with your phone?
More specifically, do you have a goal set for what you would like to do? I personally am a hands on learner so being able to poke around and potentially brick things is important.
Yeah I agree, there’s basically nothing on YT.
I don’t have anything so far, I’m learning before buying my chip. I want to know if I just want one or if I actually need one.
My goal however would be to automate my life. Unlock and lock stuff, start and stop my cars and do more stuff day by day.
To answer your question, at the beginning I would just play around with my phone but I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the PM3 because from what I learned I’ll need it to clone my badges and stuff like that, won’t I?
For cloning most LF tags you can use a blue cloner.
For cloning HF an ACR122U should work however, I do not know if the software is easy to use on mac.
The Proxmark3 is a really wonderful tool that can do both. It allows you to do a huge amount of stuff and really get into the nitty gritty bits of rfid. The proxmark just has a little bit of a learning curve to it.
You can probably get started pretty cheap by getting some ntag216 or ntag215 tags off of amazon. Those can be used with your phone and you can do a whole lot with them. As for the start stop on a car you may find The CaRFID thread to be of interest.
No no please dont. Spend the extra 30 bucks and get a proxmark3 easy so you dont risk breaking your implant. That would not be fun. You really don’t want to upgrade your implant to an xBrick in order to save a few dollars.
