Datasheet

MiFare Cards & Tags

MiFare is one of the four 13.56MHz card 'protocols' (FeliCa is another well known one) All of the cards and tags sold at

the Adafruit shop use the inexpensive and popular MiFare Classic chipset

MiFare Classic Cards

MIFARE Classic cards come in 1K and 4K varieties. While several varieties of chips exist, the two main chipsets used

are described in the following publicly accessible documents:

MF1S503x Mifare Classic 1K data sheet (https://adafru.it/aSL)

MF1S70yyX MIFARE Classic 4K data sheet (https://adafru.it/aSM)

Mifare Classic cards typically have a 4-byte NUID that uniquely (within the numeric limits of the value) identifies the

card. It's possible to have a 7 byte IDs as well, but the 4 byte models are far more common for Mifare Classic.

EEPROM Memory

Mifare Classic cards have either 1K or 4K of EEPROM memory. Each memory block can be configured with different

access conditions, with two seperate authentication keys present in each block.

Mifare Classic cards are divided into section called sectors and blocks. Each "sector" has individual access rights, and

contains a fixed number of "blocks" that are controlled by these access rights. Each block contains 16 bytes, and

sectors contains either 4 blocks (1K/4K cards) for a total of 64 bytes per sector, or 16 blocks (4K cards only) for a total of

256 bytes per sector. The card types are organised as follows:

1K Cards - 16 sectors of 4 blocks each (sectors 0..15)

4K Cards - 32 sectors of 4 blocks each (sectors 0..31) and 8 sectors of 16 blocks each (sectors 32..39)

4 Block Sectors

1K and 4K cards both use 16 sectors of 4 blocks each, with the bottom 1K of memory on the 4K cards being organised

identically to the 1K models for compatability reasons. These individual 4 block sectors (containing 64 byts each) have

basic security features are can each be configured with seperate read/write access and two different 6-byte

authentication keys (the keys can be different for each sector). Due to these security features (which are stored in the

last block, called the Sector Trailer), only the bottom 3 blocks of each sector are actually available for data storage,

meaning you have 48 bytes per 64 byte sector available for your own use.

Each 4 block sector is organised as follows, with four rows of 16 bytes each for a total of 64-bytes per sector. The first

two sectors of any card are shown:

Sector Block Bytes Description

------ ----- ----- -----------

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

1 3 [-------KEY A-------] [Access Bits] [-------KEY B-------] Sector Trailer

2 [ Data ] Data

1 [ Data ] Data

0 [ Data ] Data

0 3 [-------KEY A-------] [Access Bits] [-------KEY B-------] Sector Trailer

2 [ Data ] Data

1 [ Data ] Data

0 [ Manufacturer Data ] Manufacturer Block