Also look at Guardbunny - a self-powered open source RFID jammer

Pretty sure the micro is a STM8L, see the SWIM programming pin in the patent PDF. STM8L151x2/STM8L151x3 have marking code "L526", so probably the micro used on the board is STM8L101x1/STM8L101x2STM8L101x3 UPDATE: L536 is STM8L151F3U6

Wow, 58 bucks for one that will get smashed in wallet, or

$0.15 per meter for Aluminum Foil at Coles. I noticed that the card in this video had a $58 price tag on it. That equals 386.6m of Aluminum foil.

I love how they didn't think about an active NFC jammer nearby, did they think it was just a gimmick or something?

Would have made more sense if the active jammer was actually a pocket/pouch that you slotted your card into. Then it'd have made more sense to have the touch sensor so that you'd hold it by that portion when performing a transaction.

Love your videos Dave!

Hm... I paid roughly 20 euros back in 2013 for a nice and solid aluminium card case, which actually reliably protects the cards from getting smashed in the wallet and will stop any RFID reader, forever and with no chances of a mess if the battery gets breached... 58 bucks (even AUD) seems awfully steep for a product like this, unless you expect to be able to run with the scare tactics. Then, again, if people really buy into the myths, they'll probably prefer the aluminium foil, both in their wallet and as a hat. Oh, wait, no, I forgot that over the last couple of years there has been something of a bullshit scare about aluminium, too...

You wouldn't buy one, but you bought the last one for the sake of the teardown. Mission accomplished!

very interesting. thank you Dave

Your videos give me heartburn. Every darn time I watch your videos I have to get a bowl of cereal half way through. :/

Rather interesting. My dad has been skimmed twice on the London Underground.

Hi Dave, thanks for your videos, I appreciate all your effort. I am a "young player" and I learned a lot from your videos where you were actually building up circuits and scoping around. Can we get more of those?

Nice video Dave! Interesting, I didn't know about the transaction limits for contactless card transactions. I don't have any cards with contactless capabilities, and don't want one. (We barely got the 'chip' here in the states, and most places still use the mag stripe). Anyway, what I worry about is that someone makes an amplifier or relay system that allows the contactless system range to be extended. That's what some car thieves are doing with the new car keys. I always enjoy your videos. Cheers!

battery lasts 2.85 years in standby... the QC sticker said 2015... at least a year gone already also you said the POS box was located next to the card reader... so maybe take the .85 as well. not much for your 58 bucks lol

The UK consumer magazine "Which" investigated the problem of contactless card skimming. They found that the main danger was that the card number and expiry date were easily read and that they were able to use these (without the CVV) to buy goods online from unscrupulous retailers. Valid credit card numbers can be generated by software and so by themselves are not valuable to a criminal but having the expiry date makes them much more valuable. So there is a reason to take some precautions. I have been keeping a banknote sized piece of aluminium foil in my wallet for some time. It doesn't need to wrapped around the card, it just pretends to be a £10 note and presents zero inconvenience. This is also a good reason to not let any Tom, Dick or Harry (or Bruce) see even the front of your card, let alone the back.

For cards I do not intent to use the NFC, I used a strong flashlight to identify the coil. Then scratched a 3x3mm square with an exacto knife until i reached the coil layer and separated some of the strands. The cards don't loose other functionalities, like when frying it in the microwave. Other cards are in a RFID sleeve from ebay. They work very well and you get a couple for a few bucks.

I remember a girl that had been to South America and returned with a dorito bag wallet. That's probably more than enough to block any sniffers.

10:45 Feeling of shock as I almost thought Dave was going to decide to not tear it down.

Great stuff Dave. One thing I've not seen anyone address is how far away can you read the modulation of a valid scan. I.e. Could you passively scan the data from a genuine transaction from a distance and get usable info?

Have you seen a product called Skim Guard? It is on Australian TVSN and claims to do the same as this with a battery that recharges itself from the rfid reader apparently.

The common attacks which can work on your NFC credit card are the relay attacks, the easiest way to protect yourself against it is to have 2 NFC enabled credit cards in your wallet. Since the anticollision is not allowed in the payment applications, so unless you take them out, you are going to be safe. Without any thin foil or any other jamming device.

i keep my cards inside one of those aluminium businesscard boxes, but mainly for physical protection against breaking from sitting on them

Drinking game read the patent and drink with contactless jamming and rfid. Guarantee understanding of every circuit ;)

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but there are many comments. In the shop they positioned the jammers next to the FPOS terminal. If it is close enough to the jammers to activate them how long before the batteries in them are exhausted?

I bought something like this from JB Hifi for about $48-took with me on our US trip last year.

So question, those myki readers or the Sydney equivalent. Would a magnet cause enough interference to disable them?

would the silvery plastic shielding material of an antistatic bag work? It's somewhat more resistant than alu-foil, also conductive but maybe not enough?

My guess is that they didn't go with the internal oscillator because of the inaccuracy issues due to temp. and voltage, or maybe the external oscillator was a cheaper solution than a microcontroller with an internal one.

I suspect they are using a crystal as most low end micro internal RC oscillators do not meet the required accuracy specification for the protocol unless they are calibrated which is a pain to do on high volume low cost items. Probably cheaper to buy 1 million crystals rather than have to calibrate each unit. Power is unlikely to be an issue as the micro probably runs on an internal RC clock until it needs to modulate.

As posted before I have metallic Christmas foil in my nylon wallet ! Yes, I recycled my Christmas wrapping paper. And thank you for showing a real time use of your micro Current device ! Thank you for the video ! tjl

I note that that the "touch sensitive interface" is included in Claim 1 of the patent which could be a big mistake.

Apart from using foil, couldn't you just short circuit the coil in order to put constant load on the signal?

I think the card only activates itself if the reader (transmitter) signal is strong enough. So if you have a strong transmitter it probably starts to jam earlier

I want an RFID blocker good enough for shoplifting. Wait a minute, I've been messing with electronics for 48 years, maybe I should build one.

15:00 that's probably STM8L151F3 iirc, I have many of these for playing around.

Is it posible to do a more Active countermesure, make the scaner fry

If you have a box of them, and you set one of them off, how do they make sure they don't keep eachother going and drain the battery trying to jam each other?

I wonder if the data the jammer puts out is completely random? If it's not then surely there's a chance that Billy Black Hat could just make multiple reads of the card to determine what the noise is from the jammer is and subtract it. Certainly more difficult than just scanning the card but within the bounds of possibility.

I was going to get the uCurrent Gold, but I've decided to wait for the uCurrent Unobtanium Pro Collector's Extreme Edition 2+ to come out.

Can't the periodic signal be analysed via Fourier analysis and cleaned?

I think you use the disable pad when you want the reader to be able to scan thru your wallet otherwise the RFID jammer blocks any signal.

if its a continuous signal where the freq and everything is known cant you filter it off?

Click where, to see the previous video? I think on UKposts on Android doesn't show your links, mate.

Let's do a teardown and THEN give it a try ... love the vids (not so much the overpriced electronics in Australia ...)

I am all for the tinfoil hat (or in your wallet), but this seems redundant. Now a more powerful model that would work in a 2m or more radius would be a lot of fun to take to your local Starbucks...

I don't think that would be capacitive touch because theres are two separate traces. It just seems like they are using your finger as a conductor and then if the there is any current flow it'll just act as a switch. If it was capacitive touch, then they would only bother having one trace.Could be wrong though that might be because of there logo and they only use one half of the trace

Can you read the data from the wavelengths? or would that take an unnecessary amount of reverse engineering?

Would it be possible to make some sorta app on your phone to do this? Also harvey norman sell these cards and they keep em next to the eftpos machine. 58 bucks stuff that.

I would have thought it would be something that you put your card inside of. That would make the deactivation button make a lot more sense. So its working all the time and then is deactivated when you want to use it.

Can you review a fluoride water filter next?

Would it be possible to make one of these that would work in like a 15cm range? That would be a lot more useful than a 1 cm range.

Couldn't you do something like this on the super cheap with just a 555 and maybe an external switch?

I know that this is old but a fabric woven from wire or fine silver wire made into a purse or wallet will stop any type of scanner in it's tracks, no need for a knife to tear down that card just put it in a jar half full of Acetone and leave on it's side for 48 hours and the casing will come off very easily then wash it off with tap water and bingo a very easy teardown although I used cellulose thinners to get to the innards OK.

Keeping two different RFID cards next to one another is a simple but good technique to prevent them being detected. When interrogated, both their replies are received together and interfere with one another so that the receiver cannot sort out what is going on.

I see that these are currently unavailable on Amazon. Around $55 US.

Best solution is to cut any card the bank sends like that and mail it back to them in parts.

risk is higher over here, people are going on the tube in london at busy times and just skimming past everyone for £30 (UK max limit) also having them next to the reader like that would be draining the battery of the cards :P

I wonder how the foil and the jammer will behave with a real attacker reader, I mean with a much power full one.

Hi Dave, I remember that you had posted a video on a review of the Rigol DSA 815 TG Spectrum Analyzer. I bought one a couple years ago and I have been quite satisfied with except that lately, the clock has started to run intermittently at 1/8 the normal speed. It does not seem to have upset the normal operation of the analyzer but makes a mess of the date and time of the stored files that I transfer on the USB memory device. Recently, I found a Rigol Web page where one could ask for an updated version of the firmware. Thinking that this could solve the problem, I sent my request and never got any answer. Do you ave any suggestion as to a way to cure this problem or a Web site where I could get some support and answer from Rigol? Thank you.

In Denmark you are limited to the rough equivalent of 40 AUD / 25 Euro per contactless transaction :)

I made a little thing that makes an audible beep when something that scans card comes near my wallet. As for the cards themselves, I made a slip from aluminum tape and a paper sleeve. Ive have one person begin to actively evade me when he heard the beep.

If the jamming signal isn't random, would it be possible to program the reader to un-jam it?

I'm surprised that thing needs a battery in the first place: it should be getting all the power it needs to do its jamming from the RFID field and its large antenna.

Seems like the way to exploit RFID transactions is to use a "man in the middle" type attack - 2 accomplices, one who makes the transaction at whatever shop, using what looks like a debit card but is actually connected to a mobile phone with a wire up the sleeve or something, connected to a smartphone running an app that sends the received signal from the EFTPOS unit over the net to someone else with a similar setup that passes the signal on to the victim's card, and returns the appropriate response to the person in the shop. They could be on opposite sides of the world and it could still be done

isn't it really easy to filter out the noise since it's periodic?

"I wouldnt buy one" But you did it xD

why did he remove that ct scan tear down video

Couldnt you just fold a nice peice of aluminium foil and put it inside you wallet so when you fold the wallet it creates a faraday cage around the card.

I wonder what the cost per unit is. Seems like they are making a killing on them at $58.

Wonder of two of those close to each other would activate both and drain the batteries faster.

What happens if you increase the supply from 3v to say 3.3 / 3.6v, is the range affected at all?

So it's like one guy trying to speak to you (RFID CC) and then another guy walking up, holding his mouth, and screaming (jammer)?

Would a wallet lined internally with alfoil work i.e. wallet manufactured with alfoil inside the lining?

In New Zealand Alfoil is colloquially known as "tin foil"

$58 bucks???? I'll go buy a aluminum wallet for $5 on the bay.

6:18 wasn't it all about the right *tongue* angle? hum, puzzled :-)

I don't know if Australian keyboards are that much different, but on a typical German keyboard, you can easily produce a real µ symbol with AltGr+m … no need to use the "u" (which is only to be used if you're limited to the Latin alphabet).

wow 22:03 german id-card. well i threw in to the microwave. is more secure now.

Can just pop off the crystal?

this is an old old video by now but .. I really have to suspect that being an ordinary *rechargeable* li-ion cell .. I'd suspect way cheaper & 'good enough'

Design a pcb with credit card dimentions and with a shorted coil isn't it enough ?

just looked up the nfc app on google play, people really really really seem to hate this app. I wanted to try it out at first, but now not so much :p

I'm not really clear if the jammer prevents the card from waking up and 'speaking' or if it just confuses the POS reader...if the card is waking up and speaking it seems possible that a criminals rfid reader might be able to subtract the jamming signal and view the data from the card even if legit POS readers aren't able to. TBH pretty unconvinced that rfid cards have any advantage for me as a user. the PIN system made it difficult for card thieves / pickpockets to use my card and the rfid system doesn't do anything to stop them... nobody asked me if I wanted a less secure card attached to my account, it just turned up.

Why can't NFC cards have touch button built in? Then you could use that button to select the mode of operation. For example, hold it for 30 seconds to enable always active (normal) mode, hold it for 45 seconds to enable "on demand" mode in which you have to hold the button to make it work with NFC. People who don't care about security could use normal mode and people who are concerned about security could use "on demand" mode. And everybody's happy.

Use JackLess app for bank cards, not NFC Taginfo

Instead of random data it should send back profanity. Or dirty limericks.

Did you know, the card in the mail is read protected. it works only when you pull it off the paper.

"Couple of turns", that is certainly "more than a few". ;)

I am looking for a patent paper can some one recommend me a website or portal,I looked it over Google but I could not find it thanks

Identity Stronghold wallet. No worries.

"i brought the last one"...."i wouldnt buy one!"... but ya did!

What would it take to make one that covers two feet?

According to the A in the patent number it's only a patent application. A granted patent would have a B in its number.

Such a device would presumably be illegal in the US, which bans the use of active radio jamming devices of any type.

shine a bright light under the card and you can see the RFID antenna

They need to patent the "armourglove" for when this chip get implanted in the hand.

I was wondering why banks didn't give these things away free when you open an account, then you mentioned the price at the end. I'll stick with slipping a bit of foil behind the photo in my wallet.. Thanks for the heads up.

I first get "amourcard") What a nice name, I thought)))

Wow. $58 Australian!