Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

Discuss this post on Hacker News, Twitter While I was in Japan over winter, one thing that stood out to me was the incredible public transport system. Efficient and reliable, as expected, but the tap-in-tap-out gates at the stations were suspiciously fast. The London Underground gates don't work nearly as quick with Google Pay or any of my other contactless cards - what gives? I spent some time researching what makes Japan's transit card system (IC cards) so unique compared to the West, and all of the interesting bits I learned along the way. Basics of NFC Near-field communication is a set of protocols which lets two devices communicate with each other without physically touching, using radio waves at 13.56 MHz (defined by ISO/IEC 14443). It's used all over the place: Wait... didn't you just say that the security of MIFARE Classic is terrible? Someone could clone my keycard - or worse yet, get into my (whatever) without even needing a keycard? Yes, and it's worse than you think. Th ... Read full article.