Phone Cards

[BCNZ]

Does anyone have any good links to sites with information on how phone cards work?

By phone cards I mean the smartcards that you use when you wish to make a call from a payphone.

I'd like to learn more about them. I have a small stack of them sitting here and every time I see the little smartcard chip connector it gets me thinking about them.
I've done a bit of a search for technical info on them but I've not turned up much.

[rickove]

Yeh,wondered the same thing,as per loyalty an membership,an pokies credit/points smartcards with the chip contacts.bit of stuff still around on the mobile phone sim card stuff,but is old or very rudimentary?many had the gemplus contact logo on them.Some of the available gemplus readers,programmers an software is also old an obsolete as encrypt, has change an tighten up over the years? not a lot of new hobbiest info an rescourses on this newer stuff?again such as the phonecards you are refer to.
Maybe others will know.All the google an yahoo engines etc. is bring up sales junk these days?

[urban_s0ulja]

sounds like a interesting topic

[phoenix]

I'm sure there will be than the odd person that would know quite a bit...



It might be a bit old but might find something in here

[trash]

They're actually quite simple devices, and I cut my teath on them in the days before gold cards.
Quite simpley they aren't anything more than an EEPROM.
Now those of us who know what's inside a smart card, would say this seems waaaay too easy and vaunerable for attack by those who walk the walk.

Ok, there is a little more to them, but they are still, nothing more than an EEPROM as far as the phone is concerned.

The operation of the card is as follows.
You insert the card into the payphone.
The phone then reads the card to assertain the credit on the card.
You make or continue the call.
The phone then tells the card to deduct the functional amount.
The phone checks the new credit on the card, if there is not enough value on the card, the call is terminated.

Now just in case you're thinking of writing to the card.... they're a one way device. The value is written to the ROM and the write enable blown.
The logic of the card can only allow credit to decrease, and then when it is zero, it cannot rollover.

There is also a bit more security to them then most people realise. I've just covered the basics.

It's been a few years since I last played with a phone card, there were much more fun ways of phreaking in those days.

Good news for most people reading this site.... Elvis or Mastera or even Jaycar card readers are capable of talking to phone cards.

You may also like to check the location of the pads on your phonecard and compare them to the known locations of pads on your goldies etc.

I used to have cards from all over the world to compare them. Some just move the location of the pads down a row or they use an usual order on the pads to help stop most of the skript kiddies from getting ideas.

The best pad arrangement security I've seen on a particular card was they moved the pads half way, so that every standard programer and card reader would have issues with reading them. I took me a couple of hours of tinkering to realise their clever trick.

Not much effort has been put into advancing phonecard security. Not like TV.

[trash]

Australian Smart Cards Summit 2008, Australian Smart Cards Conference 2008

$1800 for three days..... I ask you.... Who are the fvck are the smart card pirates ?
I can't help but wonder if the ticketing to this conference is smart card based.
Nothing would please me more than to crash that party with some cloned goldies.

[weirdo]

Cas studio has some phonecard feature on it aswell.
I've never tried that out though.

[BCNZ]

Good news for most people reading this site.... Elvis or Mastera or even Jaycar card readers are capable of talking to phone cards.

I did see the Jaycar kitset card reader and at $59 NZ it's not bad really. Does this unit only read cards or will it program them as well?

Reading the sheet that comes with it, they suggest that you need 3rd party software to work in conjunction with the cards. I'm a total newbie when it comes to understanding the different types of cards and what they all do.

I read some time ago that the program contained in phone cards is difficult/impossible to read from the EEPROM. Is this true?

The reason I ask about this info is I bought an old payphone from a surplus sale and I'd like to be able to program up some cards that would work in it.

[TZB]

Australian Smart Cards Summit 2008, Australian Smart Cards Conference 2008

$1800 for three days..... I ask you.... Who are the fvck are the smart card pirates ?

It's not the Smart card guys per say. It's the whole conference thing, it's a rort.

[trash]

Of course it's a rort. I'm just jealous that these idiots can steal more money legally than we can illegally !

I'm also pissed that bank directors retirements don't involve a chain gang !

[GavinSV]

Of course it's a rort. I'm just jealous that these idiots can steal more money legally than we can illegally !

I'm also pissed that bank directors retirements don't involve a chain gang !

Seems a bit ironic that they're holding a holding a smartcard summit in a city that just canned their contract with ERG because they couldn't get their TCard system working after 10 years!!

[trash]

You'd think whoever runs the Hong Kong octopus system would just walk in here and set up shop.

NSW labor party couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery as of late.

[Art]

Were you able to reduce the credit on one without using a payphone?

[eeprommemory]

this works on telstra cards.

[Art]

Doesn't work for me get runtime error message.

Pity because it's in/output could be logged to make another app.

[knight2001dts]

runtime error here also

[Art]

Maybe it wants a real DOS shell, instead of running under Windows.
I haven't tried that yet, I'll give it a go.

[eeprommemory]

file size 15,120 bytes

MD5 : 25F129E2CF3E2B730F0492B73C88B677
AFV32 : 463E5B13

works ok under dos.
uses the printer port.

[Art]

Cool, I only tried in a Windows shell.

[knight2001dts]

@eeprommemory -

Does this only work via printer port, or can you use serial?

Jaycar reader OK?

CHEERS!!

Knight