Seminar talk for Kryptografie und IT-Sicherheit with Prof. Uhl at the University of Salzburg, summer semester 2023. The talk covered the protocol layers that smart cards live on - physical structure (contact pad, antenna inlay), the ISO 7816 stack for contact cards and ISO 14443 for contactless, and the application-level APDU protocol sitting on top of both - with a quick historical detour for context.
Like most of my talks, the goal was to keep things practical. I built a small access-control demo - a software “gate” that unlocks when it sees a known card UID - and used a Flipper Zero on stage to copy the UID from a valid card onto a blank one, then opened the gate with both. Always nice when the room sees the abstract protocol diagram turn into a working bypass in front of them.
