Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
1–10 of 19 posts
Re: Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
#2First off, this is way too hilarious even several hours after the fact. :)
Perhaps one thing needs to be said about the whole high-coercivity thing on transit passes. I kind of figured that the MetroCard (and likewise with, at least, the CTA Transit Pass and the St. Louis MetroLink weekly/monthly passes) used such a strip because of the generally carefree nature that people take with their magstripe tickets for public transit. I can't recall the last time I've handled anything like that with care, but at the same time, it pretty much just works no matter how badly I manage to treat it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is something like "lawl hax." Now, the trick is to do stupid stuff with the data on the card. ;)
Re: Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
#3They both have magnetic strips. Ha...I don't get it.
Re: Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
#4They both have magnetic strips. Ha...I don't get it.
The funny part for me is the fact that the original keycard was lo-co and lost its magnetism in a day of moving around and having it next to another magnetic strip, where as the cloned MetroCard remained perfectly functional. Not to mention that (with the vendor the hotel is using), an encoder capable of handling hi-co is twice the price of the standard encoder, or about 16x the price of the MSR805 used for the cloning (which does low- and hi-co).
Re: Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
#5They both have magnetic strips. Ha...I don't get it.
The funny part for me is the fact that the original keycard was lo-co and lost its magnetism in a day of moving around and having it next to another magnetic strip, where as the cloned MetroCard remained perfectly functional. Not to mention that (with the vendor the hotel is using), an encoder capable of handling hi-co is twice the price of the standard encoder, or about 16x the price of the MSR805 used for the cloni…
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Re: Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
#6Did the hotel keycard have anything interesting encoded in the magnetic data? I've heard stories about credit card numbers and the likes being stored in the clear on them.
Re: Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
#7Did the hotel keycard have anything interesting encoded in the magnetic data? I've heard stories about credit card numbers and the likes being stored in the clear on them.
I can tell you there was nothing on tracks 1 or 2, and track 3 is purely the data for the lock itself (which I can tell you is an encrypted blob containing nothing but the data required to open the lock, although I can't talk about what exactly that is). Some properties will put data on tracks 1 or 2 if they have systems that allow you to make purchases with your keycard, but I don't know what that data entails exactly.
Re: Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
#8Thanks for all the awesome replies here
Re: Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
#9What a great hack!
We need more ppl who makes hacks to hardware. Technical stuff can always be hacked by us :)
I love it!
Re: Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard
#10Major Malfunction had a great class at Black Hat: USA last year, and has been at DefCon/SchmooCon as well showing how insecure these systems are.
Check out http://rfidiot.org/ for some of his research into RFID, mag strip cards and all that jazz. It is all very interesting.