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Jonathan Westhues has a how-to on cloning your own Verichip (schematics, parts list, gerber and source available) he writes - "I used a relatively sophisticated piece of electronics to clone a Verichip. This made things trivially easy. Even though I had never seen a Verichip before in my life, I just had to write a hundred lines of code; but because I used my proxmarkii, I've heard claims that it is impossible to talk to a Verichip without expensive equipment.
Also, I embarrassed myself in front of a documentary crew when I couldn't clone the Verichip that their presenter had had implanted. (He was a fairly big guy, and the chip was very deep beneath his skin, so I didn't have enough read range to do it with my proxmarkii. We tried shoving the antenna into his arm, but I think we just pushed the chip deeper. A proxmark3--which can read them at the correct operating frequency of 134 kHz, instead of 125 kHz--would have worked fine, and in fact I had brought two of them; but I destroyed both, through my own stupidity, before I got a chance to do the demo. If you build a proxmark3, then don't forget to populate D10/D11.)
I therefore wanted an inexpensive cloner, with decent read range and a simple user interface. It should be easy to build, and it should not require a PC to operate. This will make it easy for you to clone a Verichip yourself, even if you don't have a lot of money, or any knowledge of electronics. The device will also be simpler to use, and have fewer parts to fail; if more journalists have chips implanted, then this reduces the chance that I will screw up the demo for them as well." Thanks Annalee! - Link.
If true, this is quite amusing. VeriChip's website clearly states that their product cannot be counterfeited. I wonder why they don't use active with encryption?
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If the info can be passively read, there's no reason it can't be cloned.
If the chip was a temper proof chip (a la credit card embedded chip) that only 'talks' to a temper proof reader (secure hardware provided by Verichip) and all communication between the two was encrypted, and all software was secure, and all hardware was impossible to reverse engineer, and all keys are unrecoverables, and all authentications between device happen without leaking any info (readers and chips not 'trusting' each others)
If all that was true, then, you would have a solution that stands a chance against a moderately hardware hacker for more than 10 minutes.
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"It is possible to build this circuit by soldering wires from point to point. I don't recommend it, unless your time is worth nothing; printed circuit boards were invented for a reason. ... you could even use one of those terrible iron-on methods, and do it yourself in your kitchen. If you don't need silkscreen and soldermask (the white lettering that tells you where the parts go, and the green stuff that stops traces from shorting to each other when you glob solder on them), then PCBExpress can get you two boards for sixty dollars, which isn't terrible"
wow..
This is a fairly simple circuit, even for point to point wiring on a perf board. A novice could have this circuit completed long before your pcb's arrive in the mail.
Silkscreen: I dont need one when I have the pcb layout right next to me (although this one IS possible with the toner transfer method). Example toner pcb here: http://tinyurl.com/me7pb (no print)
$60 is huge compared to ~$1 for a small chunk of perf board.
I see what you are getting at, just dont spread myths about excellent prototyping methods.
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