RFID badge blockers
Hello,
Does anyone know how the open faced RFID blocking badge holders work?
I recently purchased a few products from ID Stronghold to help protect my badge. The various websites claim that the open face badge holders work but my experience suggests otherwise.
Here is a product designed to protect against older Low Frequency readers at 125 KHz:
https://www.idstronghold.com/collections/badgeholders/products/secure-badge-holder-bloxprox-lite-portrait
Here is another model that protects against more modern High Frequency readers:
https://www.idstronghold.com/collections/badgeholders/products/secure-badge-holder-duolite-portrait
However, when you swipe your badge against the reader it reads the card without a problem. I am not able to reproduce the results that I see from the demonstrations on the website.
However, my personal RFID blocking wallet stops the badge from scanning every time. This wallet is fully enclosed so I can understand why it is effective and the open face ones are not.
So are these open faced badge holders a joke? Or am I not testing against the intended scenario which is a long range skimming attack?
Posted Jan 21, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC
The good ones do work. Have a look on YouTube for deviant ollam. Lots of great videos on physical security including rfid stuff.
Thanks for the tip. I have watched two Deviant videos so far and the guy seems to be very knowledgeable about physical security.
This video seems directly related to my issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X6DVQH0Js0
He is using the product that I purchased, but he is testing over High Frequency. So apparently there is something else going on in our environment that these protectors are not accounting for.
EDIT: Correction, he tests in both HF and LF after re-watching. I checked with ID Stronghold and they confirmed that the BloxProx product is designed for a specific kind of HiD 125 card. Our ProxCards are a different variety that they have an alternative product for. At least I know I'm not crazy.
The secret of the open face RFID badge blocker is that a slab of metal absorbs some of the energy created by the antenna in the Prox Card. If enough energy is absorbed the reader will not be able to detect the information on the card.
There are lots of articles on RFID absorbing metals online.
I'm going to buy ones that dont work, give them to my team... act surprised that they don't work.. then wait a month and start swapping them with similar ones that do work in my buildings. Should be worth the wait!