I recently spoke to a client who wanted me to try to help him clone his “Arcade Card”. I immediately rejected him as I wasn’t into illegal stuff like cloning stored value cards. Besides, I was highly doubtful that modern stored value cards are that easily duplicated. He went on to explain that the card has no stored value and was simply sort of an identification card for the Wangan Midnight series of racing games in the arcade. The card authenticates the user to his/her Banapassport account which stores the cars acquired through the game.
After speaking to a few players, I found out that the common reasons why they would want to clone their original cards are:
- Convenience. The Banapassport card can now exist also in the form of a key tag or even sticker. Hanging the key tags with your other keys seems like a great idea.
- Backup. While players with Banapassport cards that are properly linked to their email address can recover the data in the event of the loss of the original card, there is a cost involved as a new original card needs to be obtained. Also, if the player’s Banapassport card is not linked to an irrecoverable account, there is no way to recover the data. Having a physical clone will solve the problem.
- Security. Leaving the original card at home and only going to the arcade with the generic looking cloned tag makes it unlikely that anyone knows what the tag is for if it gets lost.
- Sharing. While one cannot log in to two machines simultaneously, two or more players who are not staying close to each other can each hold on to a card/tag to play at different times.
After doing some research, I managed to crack the keys and successfully clone a Banapassport card into a generic RFID key tag:
Interested? Head over to Carousell : Banapassport Card Cloning
