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Exploiting Keyspace Reduction And Relay Attacks In 3Des And Aes Protected NFC Tags

Presenters detail vulnerability discovery and exploitation in Exploiting Keyspace Reduction And Relay Attacks In 3Des And Aes Protected NFC Tags.

Summary

Overview: Nathan Nye (True Anomaly) and Philip Toan (Ledger) present at Hardwear.io on exploiting keyspace reduction and relay attacks against 3DES and AES-protected NFC tags.

Key Topics: NFC authentication weaknesses in access control; relay attacks over sub-gigahertz links; keyspace reduction techniques; prior MIFARE Classic vulnerability research; and live card unlocking demonstration.

Technical Details: Researchers demonstrate authenticating with a locked NFC card via relay, then updating configuration to unlock memory pages from 10 of 48 to 44 of 48 accessible. The attack chains relay communication with an unlock-mode configuration write.

Takeaways: AES and 3DES-protected NFC implementations remain vulnerable to relay attacks. Physical access control deployments should not assume cryptographic protection alone prevents cloning.

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