MiFare DESFire are iso14443A compliant contactless smartcards, and support all layers including iso14443-4. These cards are so-called “stored value” cards, so you cannot install and execute your own program code on DESFire cards. DESFire is like a memory card with access control.Typical usage is within public transportation and access control.DESFire cards are considered secure. Even though there are some theoretical security flaws, no public working hack has been published like there has been for Mifare classic (standard) cards. (The new DESFire EV1 cards are supposed to address the flaws found in v0.6).Depending on the version of the card, a DESFire card might support commands in native, native-wrapped or iso7816-4 command set styles.

• Software version v0.4 does not support APDU (only native commands)
• v0.5 adds support for wrapping native commands inside ISO 7816 style APDUs
• v0.6 adds ISO/IEC 7816 command set compatibility.

New versions of DESFire cards (EV1) (v1.3) support extended APDU commands.“Application” in DESFire terms is more like a DF (Directory File) in iso7816. DESFire AIDs (Application IDs) are 3 bytes long.The command style of the first command determines the mode for the rest of the session. You cannot mix different command modes in the same session.First, lets look at Native command mode.

Native Command mode:

Most of these commands are one byte long, and the card responds with “statusbyte + [optional data]”Statusbyte examples:00 : Command successful af : More data (send command 'af' to fetch remaining data) 9d : Permission Denied Communication flow:-> To card 60 af af 6a 5a 00 00 00 6f 45 64 00 0a 00 af b0 cc bc ed 8f c8 38 c9 08 dc e2 4d 86 ca ec 3c 90 60 00 00 00 00 90 af 00 00 00 00 90 af 00 00 00 00 90 6a 00 00 00 00 90 5a 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 90 6f 00 00 00 00 90 45 00 00 00 00 90 64 00 00 01 00 00 90 0a 00 00 01 00 00 90 af 00 00 10 b0 cc bc ed 8f c8 38 c9 08 dc e2 4d 86 ca ec 3c 00