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I remember when first contactless payment options appeared, many people started buying anti-RFID wallets and bags. I'm not sure if they're still a thing, but the people who need "radio-privacy" will definitely find a way.

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I have a few wallets with alleged RFID blocking. For those its mainly to stop arse grabbing attacks where card info (or security badge info) could be cloned with a little badge reader held in someone's palm.

Smart cards store secret keys and modifiable internal state on-device. Older smart cards, with for example a MIFARE chip from around the year 2000, can be cloned relatively easily because they have many vulnerabilities, but newer cards with for example an NXP SmartMX2 P60 are, to date, impossible to clone unless you have access to the card for a large amount of time.

You'd also be surprised how powerful smart cards are these days. the aforementioned NXP chip has 586 KB ROM, 144 KB EEPROM and 11 KB RAM, crypto coprocessors for RSA/ECC/DES/AES, and a 32-bit CPU.

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