I have got a seriously burning question here... I have got a Lenovo W510 with a built in chip-based smart card reader and a Lenovo T410 with a built in contactless smart card reader. I have got a couple of expired debit cards lying around and it would be a sheer waste sending them to the shredder... I did try to insert them into my smart card reader (W510) and hovered it above my T410 contactless reader. Both cases detected that the card existed but couldn't recognise them. So I am thinking, is it possible to turn them into computer security smart cards? Surely someone has written an open source implementation that could overwrite the useless data that is already embedded in those cards (they have expired and won't be allowed on payment systems anyway). I have searched on google but everyone suggests re-using them otherwise - cutting cards and making physical structures or other lifehacks, but I think that there may be a way to breathe new life into these expired cards. Hope to hear for some suggestions from everyone here!
I'm not sure, but the chip might be read only and might not have the ability to be written to. If it is capable of being written to, then the the chip most likely is heavily encrypted. Even if the card is expired, credit card companies don't want hackers to gain access to their networks using old cards by rewriting to them. Most likely this isn't possible.