EasyCard is a contactless smartcard system operated by the EasyCard Corporation, which was previously named the "Taipei Smart Card Corporation", for payment on the Taipei Metro, buses, and other public transport services in Taipei since June 2002, and its usage has since expanded to multiple kinds of businesses.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,290 |
Name EasyCard was chosen in a contest where the general public was asked to propose names.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,291 |
In 2003, the EasyCard logo won the 20th American Corporate Identity Award of Excellence.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,292 |
EasyCard can be used for the Maokong Gondola without any discounts.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,293 |
EasyCard are available for each station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,294 |
EasyCard can be add-valued only at the information center of each station of Kaohsiung Metro.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,295 |
EasyCard can be used on most city bus systems and several inter-city bus in Taiwan.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,296 |
The EasyCard machine prevents repeated transactions on the same card until the bus travels into the next paying section.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,297 |
EasyCard is accepted in government-run parking lots and some privately run parking lots.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,298 |
Consumer safety, all money from EasyCard deposits are held in the EasyCard Prepaid Trust Fund managed by Cathay United Bank.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,299 |
Joint-branded cards allow for an EasyCard to be linked with a credit or ATM account to automatically add value.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,300 |
EasyCard uses multiple encryption techniques to prevent illegal modification of values and hacking.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,301 |
At the 27th annual German Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference in 2010, German free software programmer Harald Welte showed that it is possible to artificially change the amount of money stored on a first-generation EasyCard —based on the MIFARE Classic chip— using nothing more than a USB RFID reader and a laptop computer running open source software.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,302 |
EasyCard was able to map out and manipulate the card's internal format in 2 days on a trip in Taiwan.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,303 |
However, hacking the EasyCard remains illegal, and in September 2011 a 24-year-old engineer was arrested on suspicion of fraudulently using a hacked EasyCard.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,304 |
EasyCard has since addressed several of the weaknesses in later card hardware revisions but remains vulnerable to several known attacks on the cryptography of MIFARE Classic that cannot be addressed without breaking backwards compatibility to existing infrastructure.
| FactSnippet No. 1,485,305 |