DESFire EV1 card emulation

Question

I need to emulate a DESFire EV1 card on an Android device. However, I'm confused on how to use the Mifare SDK (lite or advanced) with the HCE.

Is that even possible? I need to start the project and I had a lot of researches about how the data are stored and ciphered in the DESFire cards but I ended up with the fact that I need to use Mifare SDK on HCE.

Answer 1

First of all, you cannot use the MIFARE SDK to emulate cards. The MIFARE SDK provides reader-side functionality only.

Second, you cannot emulate the whole functionality of MIFARE DESFire (EV1) cards using Android HCE. However, you can emulate parts of the MIFARE DESFire protocols (more specifically, you can only emulate ISO/IEC 7816-4 framing (either ISO command set or wrapped native command set) and only if preceded by an ISO SELECT by AID command). If that's sufficient depends on the requirements of the reader side of your system.

• If your reader only supports the DESFire native command set: You cannot emulate a corresponding card using Android HCE.
• If your reader uses the wrapped native command set but does not start the communication with an ISO SELECT (by AID) command: You cannot emulate a corresponding card using Android HCE.
• If your reader uses the wrapped native command set and starts the communication with an ISO SELECT (by AID) command (the AID of MIFARE DESFire is D2760000850100): You can register your HCE service for the DESFire AID and will be able to receive all wrapped native commands after this AID has been selected.
• If your reader uses the ISO command set but the first command is not an ISO SELECT (by AID) command: You cannot emulate a corresponding card using Android HCE.
• If your reader uses the ISO command set and starts the communication with an ISO SELECT (by AID) command (either for the MIFARE DESFire AID or (with DESFire EV1) for the ISO AID of one of the DESFire applications): You can register your HCE service for the DESFire AID (or the AID of the specific application) and will be able to receive all ISO commands after this AID has been selected.

Note that there may be licensing issues if you emulate MIFARE DESFire cards.

Answer 2

MIFARE Classic cannot be emulated in HCE because it works directly on top of ISO 14443-3. HCE emulates the higher layer, ISO 14443-4. But that's the layer where MIFARE DESFire is implemented, so yes it can be done. I have not done it myself but I know at least one company that has made it work, and probably there are several.