magnetic stripe encoding

flush

hi all

I am student in automated systems electromechanics and I am quite new to what i'm writing about.. but I figured out this is very interesting; magnetic stripe encoding

A friend of mine owns a plasma cutting metal shop and they recently installed magnetic stripe readers to enter the cutting shop and some other controlled areas of the company. He asked me if I could figure out to make a working copy of one of his magnetic cards.

He gave me one original card, I confirmed this card was working, and I brought it home.

I have make what i think to be an exact copy of his card, it has the very same flux reversals at the very same intervals, the very same track density and i see in the TickDuration graphic, which shows 1 and 0 streams, that both graphics (original and copy) are quite similar. The device I use is meant to copy any kind of magnetic stripe (this is why he asked me) but still it will not work in his reader.. says "reading error".

I have read that some magnetic stripe encoding security is enhanced by controlling the timing jitter. I am not sure about this and/or how to control this.. could it be possible? Also, is it possible that his reader is able to figure out that the magnetic stripe has been modified? (even though its an exact copy, written using raw data input/output). Also, if his cards were to be HiCo and i would make a copy on a LoCo stripe, would the reader notice this or would just go on as LoCo readers read HiCo and LoCo stripes the same way ?

I can give any more informations about the device and software I use, and I post screenshots of the graphics and data if you want.
If anyone could give me a clue about this, that would be much appreciated.


Thank you very much,

flush

Greg Bernhardt

Did you try a google search first?
http://www.google.com/search?q=magne...ient=firefox-a