Break Me If You Can: Exploiting PKO and Relay Attacks in 3DES/AES NFC

Summary

The title comes directly from the default factory key programmed into every MIFARE Ultralight C chip by NXP. When you read the 16-byte 3DES key from a fresh Ultralight C tag, it spells out the ASCII string BREAKMEIFYOUCAN!. This appears to be a deliberately playful challenge left by NXP's engineers in 2008 for the security research community, and embedded directly in the Ultralight C's memory. We chose the paper's title to reflect this challenge, having demonstrated multiple practical attacks. Of course, in any properly configured deployment, this default key should be replaced with a unique, securely generated key before deployment.