undefined | Better HN

0 pointsstavros1y ago0 comments

NTAG215 isn't "magic", right? I have a bunch of NTAG215 stickers and I'm not entirely sure what their difference is with magic cards.

0 comments

ewpratten1y ago

Think of it like a subset of MIFARE.

In a simple sense, NTAG cards can do NFC things, but MIFARE can do lots more (access control for example)..and also NFC things..somewhat.

Magic mifare refers to special cards that let you bypass the write-lock of genuine mifare cards. These are mostly used for cloning keys (either for red-team pentesting or for people who want a copy of an office key for whatever reason)

lxgr1y ago

It's not really a subset:

MIFARE Classic uses a proprietary and mandatory encryption/authentication algorithm and is therefore not ISO 14443-4 compliant. As a result, NFC-compliant readers don't need to support it, and in fact non-NXP ones (including many popular Android phones) usually don't.

On the other hand, as you say, MIFARE Classic supports capabilities beyond NFC/NDEF, but there are fully NFC-compliant tags that do so as well (e.g. MIFARE DESfire, which properly stacks encryption in an ISO 14443-4 compliant way).

stavrosOP1y ago

Ah, thanks, so I guess to write tags like URLs and things I don't really need Mifare cards, the NTAG cards are fine. Thanks for the info!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse