How to Hack Barcodes (EAN)

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How to Hack Barcodes

(EAN)
by +ORC

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Let's begin with a little history. Universal Product Code (UPC) was
adopted for commercial use by the grocery industry in the USA.
Among the advantages were a rapid, accurate and reliable way of
entering stock information into a computer and the possibility to
sack a lot of workers and to do more profit. The early success led
to the development of the European Article Numbering System
(EAN), a symbology similar to UPC, that is widely used in Europe
and in the rest of the World. I'll teach you to crack this one, since
I do not -fortunately- live in the States. Keep in mind, anyway,
that there are different barcode symbologies, each with its own
particular pattern of bars. The UPC/EAN code used on retail
products is an all-numeric code; so is the Interleaved 2 of 5 Code.
Code 39 includes upper case letters, digits, and a few symbols.
Code 128 includes every printable and unprintable ASCII character
code.
The most new one is a 2-D code. These are special rectangular
codes, called stacked barcodes or matrix codes. They can store
considerably more information than a standard barcode. They
require special readers which cost more than a standard scanner.
The practical limit for a standard barcode depends on a number of
factors, but 20 to 25 characters is an approximate maximum. For
applications that need more data, matrix codes are used.

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BARCODES
Those little lines that you see on any book you buy, on any bottle
you get, on any item around you... do you know how they work? If
you do not you may be excused, but you cannot be excused if you
never had the impulse to understand them... crackers are curious
by nature... heirs of an almost extinct race of researchers that has
nothing in common with the television slaves and the publicity and
trend zombies around us. Cracker should always be capable of
going beyond the obvious, seek knowledge where others do not
see and do not venture.

Serial Number Lists

Name

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Parcel Service look for a small square label with a pattern of dots
and a small bullseye in the centre. This is a MaxiCode label, and it
is used by UPS for automatic destination sortition.
The manufacturer's ID number on the barcode uniquely identifies
products. These numbers are managed by the Uniform Code
Council in Dayton, Ohio for the States and Canada and by the EAN
authority (Internationale Article Numbering Association) in
Bruxelles, for Europe and the rest of the World. The
manufacturer's ID number accounts for some digits of the code,
which leaves other digits to be assigned in any way the producer
wants. He provides retail outlets with a list of his products and
their assigned codes so that they can be entered in the cash
register system. Many codes are NOT on the products and are
added by the supermarkets on the fly, using an internal code
schema that may be non standard. Now it's enough... let's crack.
BARCODES are the only thing an automated casher needs to see
on a product to calculate its price and automatically catalogate the
sold merchandise... imagine (just imagine it :=) coz it would be
extremely illegal to act in this way) somebody would fasten an
adhesive home-made codebar label direct on the top of the
supermarket/mall/retail store label, say on a bottle of Pomerol
(that's a very good but unfortunately very expensive french wine).
The new label would mean for the casher something like "cheap
wine from Bordeaux, France, cost so and so, everything it's OK, do
not worry"... do you think that anybody would come to the idea
that there is something wrong with the label, with the bottle or
with you? I have been codebaring for years and had only once a
problem, coz my printer was running out of ink and the scanner in
the supermarket could not read it... so what? Act uninterested,
always wear jackets of the utmost quality, shetland pullovers and
beautiful expensive shoes... (all articles that you may codebar too,
by the way), in this society appearance and look count much more
than substance and knowledge... LET'S USE THIS TO OUR
ADVANTAGE! Nobody will ever come to the idea that you may
actually really know the working of the scheme... coz codebar is
pretty complicated and not exactly exceptionally public. On the
Web there are a lot information about it, but most of them are
useless, unless you know how to search most of the time you'll
find only sentences like this one:
"The calculated check digit is the twelfth and final digit in the
U.P.C.code. It is calculated based on a specific algorithm, and is
necessary to ensure that the number is read or key-entered
correctly."
But good +ORC will now explain you everything you need to
crack:

THE 13 BAR "CODES"

Each barcode label has 13 values, from #0 to #12 (that's the EAN
code, the UPC american one has only 12, from #0 to #11).
#0 and #1 indicate the origin of the product.
#2 to #11 give the article code
#12 (the last and 13th one) is a checksum value, that verifies the
validity of all the other numbers.
How is it calculated? #12 is calculated in 4 steps
VALUE A: You sum odd position numbers:
(#0+#2+#4+#6+#8+#10)

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VALUE B: You sum even position numbers and multiply by

3:((#1+#3+#5+#7+#9+#11)*3)
VALUE C: You sum value A and value B
VALUE D: You mod value C (you divide by 10 and only keep the
remaining units, a very widespread checking scheme. If the result
is not zero, you subtract it from 10.
Now look at a barcode label, get some books or other barcoded
items and *watch* it...
Bar codes are supposed to have "quiet zones" on either side of the
symbol. Quiet zones are blank areas, free of any printing or
marks,typically 10 times the width of the narrowest bar or space
in the bar code. Failure to allow adequate space on either side of
the symbol for quiet zones can make it impossible to read the bar
code. On the barcode there are two "borders", left and right, and a
"middle" longer line. These three lines are longer than the others
and are used to "regulate" the scanner to whatever dimension has
been used for the barcode.
#0 dwells left of the first (left) border and has a special meaning,
the other 12 numbers are written "inside" the code and are
divided in two "groups" by the middle bar.
Each value is coded through SEVEN bars: black=1 and White=0.
These form two couples of "optic" bars of different widths.
We come now to the "magic" part: In order to bluff the simpletons,
barcode uses three different SETS of characters to represent the
values 0-9. This should make it impossible for you to understand
what's going on, as usual, in this society, slaves should not need
to worry with the real functioning of things.
Here are the graphic codes of the three graphic sets:

0:
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:

CODE A
0001101
0011001
0010011
0111101
0100011
0110001
0101111
0111011
0110111
0001011

Borders:
Centre:

(13)
(25)
(19)
(61)
(35)
(49)
(47)
(59)
(55)
(11)

CODE B (XOR C) CODE C (NOT A)

0100111 (39) 1110010 (114)
0110011 (51) 1100110 (102)
0011011 (27) 1101100 (108)
0100001 (33) 1000010 (066)
0011101 (29) 1011100 (092)
0111001 (57) 1001110 (078)
0000101 (05) 1010000 (080)
0010001 (17) 1000100 (068)
0001001 (09) 1001000 (072)
0010111 (23) 1110100 (116)

101
01010

- The C graphic set is a "NOT A" graphic set.

- The B graphic set is a "XOR C" graphic set.
- each value has two couples of bars with different widths
Now watch some labels yourself... see the difference between the
numbers left and the numbers right? The first "half" of the barcode
is coded using sets A and B, the second "half" using set C. As if
that were not enough, A and B are used inside the first "half" in a

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combination that varies and depends from value #0, following 10

different patterns:

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

#1
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A

#2 #3 #4 #5 #6
A A A A A
A B A B B
A B B A B
A B B B A
B A A B B
B B A A B
B B B A A
B A B A B
B A B B A
B B A B A

"Ah! Stupid buyer will never understand why the same values
gives different bars! Nothing is as reliable as barcodes!" :=)
Let's take as example the codebar for Martini Dry:
BARCODE: 8 0 00570 00425 7
Let's see: we have a 8 0 0 = booze
Then a 000570 as ABABBA and a 004257 as C "Even" sum:
8+0+5+0+0+2 = 15 (even sum)
Then a 0+0+7+0+4+5= 16 and 16 *3 = 48 (odd sum)
Then a 15+48=63
63 === 3
10 - 3 = 7 = checksum
Pattern = 8 = ABABBA CCCCCC
OK, one more example: Osborne Windows programming series
Volume 2 General purpose API functions (always here on my
table)...
BARCODE: 9 7 80078 81991 9
Let's see: we have a 9 7 8 = book
Then a 780078 as ABBABA and a 819919 as C
"Even" sum: 9+8+5+8+8+4 = 42 (even sum)
Then a 7+1+5+2+4+4= 23 and 23 * 3 = 69 (odd sum)
Then a 42+69=111
111 === 1
10 - 1 = 9 = checksum
Pattern = 9 = ABBABA
Well... what's the point of all this?
The point, my pupils, is that who DOES NOT KNOW is taken along
on a boat ride, who KNOWS and LEARNS can use his knowledge in
order to try to beat blue and black the loathsome consumistic
oligarchy where we are compelled to live. Try it out for yourself...
if you crack correctly and wisely your supermarket, mall and
library bills will be cut to almost zero.

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Write a small program to print whichever codebar you fancy (or

whichever your mall uses) in whichever size on whichever sort of
label you (or better your targets) fancy... it's quickly done with
Visualbasic or Delphy... but you'll not find much on the Web
Alternatively you could also write, as I did long ago, a short c
program in dos, using a modified upper char set... and there you
are, have labels... see the world.
A small word of caution... crack only ONE item at time and try it
out first with the SAME label for the same product... i.e. the
correct code for that item, but on your own label. If it goes
through your program works good, if not, nobody will ever be able
to harm you. Anyway it never happens anything, never: the bar
code reading equipments have great tolerance, coz the scanners
must be able to recognize barcodes that have been printed on
many different medias. You should choose labels similar to the
ones effectively used only in order not to arise human suspects,
coz for all the scanner itself cares, your label could be pink with
green stripes and with orange hand-written, numbers. Mind you,
we are still just academically imagining hypothetical situations,
coz it would be extremely illegal to act in such an inconsiderate
manner.
CRACKING POWER! It's true for barcodes, for Telecom bills, for
Compuserve accounts, for Amexco cards, for banking cheques (do
you know what MICR is? Magnetic Ink Character Recognition... the
stylized little printing on the lower left of new cheques... there is a
whole cracking school working on it), for registration numbers...
you name it, they develope it, we crack it...
Begin with barcodes: it's easy, nice and pretty useful! Live in
opulence, with the dignity and affluence that should always
distinguish real crackers. Besides... you should see the assortment
of 'Pomerols' in my "Cave-a-vin" :=)

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