I recently stumbled on a talk from Ruxcon 2012 explaining the reverse of a mass transit ticketing system. Basically, they focused on paper tickets reverse engineering with a skimmer and a lot of brain activity. This seems to be quite amusing and interesting. But, nowadays a big part of the ticketing system is also using NFC (Near Field Communication) or RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) especially for people who are subscribing for a month or more.I found a few websites (like this one or this one), trying to gather knowledge about how all this ticketing system works. But, nothing really global and fully furnished (from the paper ticket system up to the NFC/RFID system).I would like to know how to set up such a lab.What hardware is required (skimmer, NFC/RFID/Smartcard reader, the needed computing power to gather, ...) ?What is, approximately, the cost, in time for setting such a lab (and getting the necessary material to work on) ?How to proceed once the lab has been set-up and the material gathered ?Is there some tricks that can lower the cost/time that you spend on it ?
How to set-up a lab for reversing a mass transit ticketing system?
hardware;smartcards
I haven't done a lot with NFC, but I recommend starting the same way I did.  Start at the hardware level and then work up.  Hardware: + BladeRF (I think it works with NFV)Misc Extra tags (get different ones from different vendors)Software: + nfcinteractor (android)Also check out: www.securitytube.net/video/8029It's a really good talk on NFC related research.