The Proxmark is an RFID swiss-army tool, allowing for both high and low level interactions with the vast majority of RFID tags and systems world-wide. Originally built by Jonathan Westhues over 10 years ago, the device has progressively evolved into the industry standard tool for RFID Analysis.
Its versatility has seen it adapted to many industries and uses: from RFID enthusiasts, academic research, product development, law enforcement, and penetration testing.
There has been a rapid evolution of the hardware and software in the last few years, resulting in mature and miniaturized versions of the hardware. There are revisions optimized for in-the-field use, such as red-teaming or pen-testing, and desktop versions tweaked for research use in the office or lab. In September 2021, the “iCopy-X” was released – a completely portable and standalone RFID Cloning device with an embedded Proxmark 3. The iCopy-X is the most versatile Proxmark-powered device to date – a culmination of many efforts to make an electronically stable, physically compact and portable device that is easy to use while maintaining full control for expert users.
Who uses a Proxmark?
- Penetration Testing: The miniature size of the latest Proxmark, along with its standalone mode and Android-based tools, make it the ideal tool for testing, sniffing, replaying, and cloning in red-teaming environments.
- Development: Access to low-level sniffing, logging, demodulating, and replay tools make the Proxmark a must-have device for anyone developing products or services in the RFID space.
- Research: The Proxmark is the tool behind all major RFID Security Research breakthroughs, including Mifare Classic Crypto cracking, Mifare PRNG analysis, VingCard exploitation, and defeat, to name a few.
- RFID Enthusiast: The Proxmark is found on the desk of thousands of hobbyists, hackers, and makers worldwide. Its comprehensive codebase provides simple RFID reading, writing, cloning, cracking, and emulation.
Proxmark Hardware
Over the last ten years, there have been several generations and revisions of the Proxmark hardware. There are several non-supported and legacy devices, as well as off-market/clone versions. The below table summarizes the Proxmark 3 hardware variations.