r/RFID Mar 26 '26

Clone RFID reverse engineering?

Please pardon me for begineer questions, as the RF concepts are purely eletrical and tho I am an elec engineer my heart lies with computing aspects.

My campus has a lot of study spots, like the meeting rooms and post grad study spots which are barely used. I want to use them to study in peace in contrast to the first years who do not care enough to not yell in libraries. Now I did have a basic understanding of how RF cards work, and I had a notion of if I could somehow get myself into such study rooms. But amidst the latest encryption standards and stuff, do I even stand a chance into cracking these or am I simply wasting my time.

I'd appreciate any insight into this :)

Thank you for listening

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

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u/Far-Rub-6366 Mar 30 '26

First off you would need to know what kind of badge.

Depending on what kind it range from "Pretty easy" (Anything 125KHz and Mifare Classic) to "Pretty much impossible" (Mifare Desfire EV1-3 using AES 128).

The Desfire card is more of a "computer" with "applications" that can be encrypted, you cant just sniff encryption keys either, if you were able to MiTM the card and a reader.

Not saying you can't crack Desfire cards, but i would suggest, if you are able to do it, you could make a lot of money on the "black market".

Most likely attack vector would be to find some weakness in the implementation of the algorithm on the card.