Messing with barcodes

posted Nov 10th 2008 7:00pm by Eliot Phillips
filed under: misc hacks, security hacks

stencil

[nico] just received his credentials for an upcoming conference. On each badge, there’s a 2D barcode with the participant’s bio and contact info. These are meant to be scanned by vendors for future contact. [nico] isn’t so interested in that and plans on updating his personal info by generating a new barcode. To this end, he’s collected a number of links to help out barcode hackers. He used the SWIPE toolkit to identify the format and decode (it has an online component too). There are also several online encoders you can use, like this one from [Terry Burton]. If you’re wondering what sort of shenanigans you can get into faking barcodes, check out [fx]’s presentation from 24C3.

[photo: seanbonner]

Comments [13]

tagged: 24c3, badge, barcode, barcode hacking, conference, conference badge, nico, scott blake, stencil, swipe, terry burton

Reader Comments

This sounds like a job for little boby tables

Posted at 7:22 pm on Nov 10th, 2008 by Tacticus

bobby*
gah i hate it when the mind and hands don’t seem to be talking to each other

Posted at 7:23 pm on Nov 10th, 2008 by Tacticus

Lol, I just did that tacitus.

At SecTor 2008 in Toronto, they had 2d bar codes on the badges that were part of a contest as well as ID info for marketing.

I had some signs printed for other stuff and printed up the same style 2d bar codes on the signs. Everyone assumed that it was part of the contest.

The barcodes decode to ’sql drop tables;’

It was fun watching people take photo’s with their phones and try to decode them. Alot of people learned a lesson that con about validating input :)

Posted at 9:42 pm on Nov 10th, 2008 by RenderMan

For some odd reason : Price-checkers at wal-mart and target can scan the back of you license….however nothing comes up.

Posted at 10:28 pm on Nov 10th, 2008 by Jon

Walmart and Target use the barcode on your license to approve checks.

Posted at 10:37 pm on Nov 10th, 2008 by raiko

who the hell still uses checks/cheques? everything here in New Zealand is still 1-d barcodes so most of this is not particularly useful…

Posted at 12:53 am on Nov 11th, 2008 by confusis

:CueCat FTW!

Posted at 4:06 am on Nov 11th, 2008 by Peter

Oh well the Corel DRAW! suite has a barcode generator built in to most of its applications so that could be useful

Posted at 5:22 am on Nov 11th, 2008 by Warren

Very interesting! But I wonder how many people sending in barcodes from their driver’s license and other personal stuff to those online tools are taking Identity Theft into consideration??

Posted at 5:28 am on Nov 11th, 2008 by MontrealPaul

I’d love to register for a conference with a carefully chosen set of credentials such that the 2d barcode on the badge was a pixel art happy face.

Posted at 5:41 am on Nov 11th, 2008 by mbm

I like the pixel art happy face idea!!!

Posted at 10:40 am on Nov 11th, 2008 by Mr.P

fabtech 07 badges had proprietary complex 2d barcodes, most booths had badge scanners, some had handheld badge scanners, some had pen and paper for info, every booth scanned info for spamming mail boxes

Posted at 7:59 pm on Nov 11th, 2008 by cartufer

I’ve been looking for some desktop software (preferably OS X or Linux/BSD) that would decode DataMatrix and other bar codes. It seems that there are programs written for iPhone and Android to do it. The Java programs presented on the link in the article here don’t work (they time out) and they seem to be targeted more at the drivers license 2D codes, not Aztec or DataMatrix. I have found many places on the web to generate most any barcode format. I just can’t find any freeware to read any of them.

Posted at 12:17 pm on Nov 18th, 2008 by ax0n

Messing with barcodes

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