

Using a Square Reader with a reel-to-reel - evanlong
http://evanlong.info/projects/reeltoreel/

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jgrahamc
Square says (<https://squareup.com/reader>): "Square is PCI-DSS Level 1
compliant and the Square Card Reader is fully encrypted. Data encryption
occurs at the moment of the credit card swipe" and has an image of the reader
with 'Security Encryption' pointing to the reader itself (see the page).

On the detail page about security
(<https://help.squareup.com/customer/portal/articles/7764>) it says: "Fully
encrypted: Square performs data encryption within the card reader at the
moment of swipe."

Yet, the app in this article appears to be simply recording audio from the
head.

So, what's going on?

~~~
void-star
The reader used in this video an older model. See
[http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/26/square-adds-encryption-
to-...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/26/square-adds-encryption-to-its-
square-reader/)

~~~
xorbyte
The new readers are black, the old (unencrypted ones) are white. There was a
presentation at BlackHat 2011 on how to use them as general purpose skimmers:
[http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/05/square-found-to-be-
ripe-f...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/05/square-found-to-be-ripe-for-
fraud-turned-into-card-skimmer/)

~~~
ajitvarma
The new readers are also white. Look very similar to the old ones but slightly
thicker.

~~~
xorbyte
Well, I do own a black reader, so perhaps Square moved back to using white at
some point. But there have been white readers unable to encrypt the data out
'in the wild', and I suspect this project used one of those.

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YmMot
I remember putting together a mag-stripe reader with old tape heads based on
schematics/code in Phrack (or maybe 2600...been awhile). At the time, tape
decks were found in almost every home, while (to me) a mag-stripe reader was
exoctic. Seems we've come full circle. Actually IIRC the older Square reader
(which seems to be the one in the video) is literally a tape head wired to a
1/8 jack aligned to read track 2.

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slug
A few years ago I built a small circuit with a few low noise opamps attached
to the reading head of an old reel-to-reel broken player, which had a few
burned tubes. I used it to extract recordings from my family made in the 60's
and converted them to wav/mp3/ogg. The result was fairly good, considering the
age of the reels and no particular care was taken to preserve them!

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DanBC
EDIT: Sorry, this sounds unduly negative. It isn't meant to!

It's cool and everything, but I can't help thinking that dragging an
electrical output from after the real reel-to-reel head would have been
better.

Is that just me?

Anyway, now you've done it you can make neat echo / loop effects by splicing
tape around some reels.

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ajays
That is an awesome hack! Kudos to you. It's one of those things that initially
sound too hard to believe, but then you think about it and go oh yeah.... why
not?

Brilliant! Very well done.

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pbhjpbhj
Should have called it reel-to-real.

