Sorry if I was being unclear with my compound snark, but using a MIFARE Classic of any provenance would be a firing offense for the CISO of my daydream company.
Indeed. Alas (or fortunately depending which colour team you work on), fully broken Mifare Classic is still all over the place, and likewise the "hardened" variant broken in this paper :(
MIFARE DESFire is an option. In a genral public reseller, I found 100 DESFire cards sold for 146€ (tax excluded), while 100 of the equivalent versions as MIFARE Classic are sold for 109€ (tax excluded). This is a differnce of 37 cents by card, MIFARE Classic are about 25% less expensive than MIFARE DESFire. I guess the difference increase with the quantity you buy at once.
