Home

Welcome to the Project

The latest version of the Chameleon is termed ChameleonMini. The cost-efficient device comes in a small credit-card form factor and is packed with various features.

ChameleonMini is a versatile emulator for contactless smartcards compliant to ISO 14443 and ISO 15693. The freely programmable platform can create perfect clones of various existing commercial smartcards, including cryptographic functions and the Unique Identifier (UID). It can be employed to assess security aspects in RFID and NFC environments in different attack scenarios, such as replay or relay attacks, sniffing of RFID communication, or functional tests of RFID equipment. The firmware of ChameleonMini can be programmed via USB bootloader. A convenient user interface allows to configure its behavior and update the settings and content of up to eight internally stored contactless cards via USB port. During normal operation, an integrated button enables user interaction. We are currently working on a purely passive operation mode.

The Chameleon Project has been started by the Chair for Embedded Security at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. The whole project is published under an open-source license to let everyone benefit from the work that has been done so far. All information required to build your own ChameleonMini are available in the code repository. If you prefer a ready-assembled, pre-programmed and tested device, please contact KAOS.

We are always looking forward to any means of contributing or contacting us. If you find RFID systems worldwide where ChameleonMini is useful, please let us know: Feel free to send us pics and videos, we will then summarize all practical use cases here on github.

We thank Simon Küppers for his skilled, affectionate and very professional development, for the great design of the MiniChameleon, the outstanding documentation and lots of useful gimmicks and improvements.

Features of the current Revision E

• Firmware support for ISO14443A Codec
• Firmware support for Mifare Classic 1K and 4K emulation (4 and 7-byte UID)
• Firmware support for Mifare Ultralight
• Hardware support for ASK modulation (Both 10% and 100%) to cover almost any card standard available
• Hardware support for ASK and BPSK load modulation using a subcarrier
• Modular firmware structure allows for easy expandability of other cards and standards
• Support for quick and reliable firmware update via Atmel DFU bootloader, thus programming hardware is required only once
• Can be controlled using a fully documented AT-like command set via CDC using the excellent LUFA USB stack
• 1 MByte of card memory allows for multiple card emulations to reside on the device simultaneously
• These settings can be switched even without a USB connection, just by pressing the button
• Card contents can be easily uploaded and downloaded by means of the command line and X-MODEM
• Thus allowing the ChameleonMini to be interfaced with standard terminal software as well as user written scripts and applications

Further information can be found in the doxygen documentation.

Videos

• September 2015: ChameleonMini in the Moscow Metro
• December 2014: Talk about electronic locks (ChameleonMini demo towards the end)
• February 2014: Emulate Contactless Payment Cards

Related Articles

• ChameleonMini on hackaday

• ATMEL Bits & Pieces from the Embedded Design World News, Insights & Tips

• Paper describing the "Chameleon" (previous version)

• Security Analysis Of Pervasive Wireless Devices

• 29c3: Milking the Digital Cash Cow

• An Embedded System for Practical Security Analysis of Contactless Smartcards

• MiniChameleon in the German Press :)

First Test of Revision E