Secure pseudonym-based near field communication protocol for the consumer internet of things

Authentication protocol plays an important role in the short-range wireless communications for the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Due to the shared nature of wireless communication networks, there are several kinds of security vulnerabilities. Recently, a pseudonym-based NFC protocol (PBNFCP) has been proposed to withstand the security pitfalls found in the existing conditional privacy preserving security protocol (CPPNFC). However, this paper further analyzes PBNFCP and shows that it still fails to prevent the claimed security properties, such as impersonation attacks against an adversary, who is a malicious registered user having a valid pseudonym and corresponding private key. In order to overcome these security drawbacks, this paper proposes a secure and efficient authentication protocol (SEAP) for NFC applications using lifetime-based pseudonyms. The proposed SEAP is simulated for the formal security verification using the widely-accepted AVISPA (Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications) tool. The simulation results show that SEAP is secure. The rigorous security and performance analysis shows that the proposed SEAP is secure and efficient as compared to the related existing authentication protocols for NFC applications.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is used for a wide range of security-critical applications such as payment or access control. Although such applications require secured data transfer, the NFC protocol does not include transport layer security. Other protocols that are built on top of NFC, such as the NFC data exchange format (NDEF), only provide insufficient security measures. Therefore, implemented security solutions are often application specific and do not follow well-established standards. To facilitate NFC usage in the Internet of Things (IoT) where millions of devices need to be secured, an efficient and sufficiently secured NFC-based protocol needs to be developed. In this paper, we present the Quick and Secured NFC (QSNFC) protocol. Our protocol is capable of performing more efficient key agreements for recurring connections, and thus, can be used as an efficient alternative to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.

As the technology of mobile devices spreads fast, the price of mobile devices is getting cheaper. Most of the people have mobile devices, and these devices have the technology of near field communication (NFC). With the long time development and research, the mobile devices use NFC technology on the payment and authentication applications, and replace the smartcard, the access control card, and the credit card by using the card emulation mode. It helps the development of NFC applications. In recent years, more and more users begin using NFC technology on mobile payment and authentication. Many researches have proposed the related NFC authentication protocols, but their schemes are still lack of some security properties and functions, which are necessary for NFC authentication protocols. In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient NFC authentication scheme between two NFC devices by the help of the authentication server that provides mutual authentication.

Counterfeit products, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, have plagued the international community for decades. To combat this problem, many anti-counterfeiting approaches have been proposed. They use either Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Near Field Communication (NFC) physical tags affixed to the products. Current anti-counterfeiting approaches detect two counterfeiting attacks: (1) modifications to a product's tag details, such as changing the expiration date; and (2) cloning of a genuine product's details to reuse on counterfeit products. In addition, these anti-counterfeiting approaches track-and-trace the physical locations of products as the products flow through supply chains. Existing approaches suffer from two main drawbacks. They cannot detect tag reapplication attacks, wherein a counterfeiter removes a legitimate tag from a genuine product and reapplies it to a counterfeit or expired product. Second, most existing approaches typically rely on a central server to authenticate products. This is not scalable and creates tremendous processing burden on the server, since significant volumes of products flood through the supply chain's nodes. In addition, centralized supply chains require substantial data storage to store authentication records for all products. Moreover, as with centralized systems, traditional supply chains inherently have the problem of a single-point of failure. The thesis of this dissertation is that a robust, scalable, counterfeiting-resistant supply chain that addresses the above drawbacks and can be simultaneously achieved by (i) using a combination of NFC tags on products and a distributed ledger such as blockchain for reapplication-proof, decentralized, and transparent product authentication (ii) a novel game-theoretical consensus protocol for enforcing true decentralization, and enhancing the protocol's security and performance. In this dissertation, we first propose a new Tag Reapplication Detection (TRD) system to detect reapplication attacks using low-cost NFC tags and public key cryptography. To detect reapplication attacks, TRD tracks the number of times a tag has been read in the supply chain using a 'central' authentication server. Second, leveraging the blockchain technology, we propose the Block-Supply Chain, a transformation of TRD into a decentralized supply chain. In this chain, each node maintains a blockchain (distributed public ledger) per product. This blockchain comprises chained blocks, where each is an authentication event. The Block-Supply Chain can detect tag reapplication attacks and can replace the centralized supply chain design, thus overcoming the centralization issues. One of the fundamental characteristics of blockchain technology is the consensus protocol. Consensus protocols ensure that all nodes in the blockchain network agree on the validity of a

Near Field Communication (NFC) is widely used today in many useful applications, such as contactless payment, identification, and file exchange. Due to the limitations on computation, power, and cost of NFC devices, NFC systems are often lack of encryption or weakly encrypted, leaving them exposed to security attacks. One solution for this problem is to install strong cryptographic protocols on NFC devices. However, it involves upgrading and revoking deployed NFC devices, which is costly and impractical. Moreover, encryption algorithms are usually considered expensive for resource constrained NFC devices in terms of computation overhead and energy consumption. In this paper, aiming at securing NFC from eavesdropping at physical layer, we propose SecNFC, a solution that changes the signals on the initiators to hide the communications, but does not require any changes to the targets. In this work, for the first time, we address a practical problem of synchronization offset between two NFC terminals, which can be exploited by an eavesdropper to compromise the transmitted bits. SecNFC takes into consideration the synchronization offset and solves the challenge by introducing blocking signals around the transition point when the target switches load between on and off. With this solution, even with the existence of synchronization offset, eavesdroppers cannot extract any bit information from eavesdropping. We conduct extensive simulations to evaluate the performance of SecNFC. We also build a testbed based on USRP software defined radio and off-the-shelf NFC tags to evaluate SecNFC in a real-world environment. Both simulation and experimental results show that SecNFC can efficiently prevent NFC from eavesdropping with a slight and tolerable decoding performance degradation at the initiator.

The near field communication (NFC) technology helps save both time and power when compared with Bluetooth and other similar technologies. However, NFC is vulnerable to various networking attacks such as message modification. In this work, a secure processing technique is introduced to protect the NFC devices and associated data from several attacks. A certificate record is added to the NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) message to enhance security. The proposed processing technique in a NFC system checks the authenticity of the sender, then if appropriate, processes the incoming NDEF messages and stores them in device memory. Using MATLAB, an NFC system with the proposed processing technique is simulated. Simulation results suggest that the processing time increases linearly as the certificate size increases and the processing time remains almost the same for various record sizes. It is also observed that the proposed protocol offers better security by detecting tag manipulation, certificate modification, etc. The proposed secure processing technique for NFC can be extended to enhance security in ubiquitous computing and mobile communication.

Nowadays; the adoption of Internet of things (IoT) technologies and applications in everyday is rising. IoT technology such as Near Field Communication (NFC) is vastly adopted due to its short range frequencies, making it a good candidate for token based security access control applications such as door systems and attendance systems. However, due to the miniature size of NFC tags; its clear text contents and unprotected communication channel between tag-reader-database; NFC technology is prone to security attacks such as the man in the middle; denial of services (DOS) and etc. These attacks lead to leakage of user critical data which could impact any organization adopting NFC applications and technologies. In this paper; NFC vulnerability, causing both security and privacy attacks studies in depth. By focusing on attacks such as DOS and data corruptions; existing risk assessment models are evaluated using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. Best practice in mitigating these attacks is presented as well. A case study on an existing NFC access control application is then used to demonstrate the effectiveness of best practice solutions proposed.  Â

The internet protocols, such as TCP/IP, became the de-facto standards. However, some recent communication services require more efficient and lightweight protocols. This paper focuses on the design method to provide cross-layered protocols to satisfy these needs. It is observed that a cross-layer design approach can provide more efficiency at the sacrifice of the layered structure, which may lead complicated interfaces, i.e., ‘spaghettis’, and may cause unexpected bugs. A new design concept for cross-layered protocols is proposed in this paper, which is on a basis of the function pool and scenario table. This concept is applied to near field communication (NFC) protocols to let them get affinity with the internet ones. A series of new NFC protocols are designed and are evaluated with respect to communication quality and throughput. It is confirmed that these protocols have better performance than the original NFC one with less complexity compared to the standardised internet protocols.

A secure end-to-end proximity NFC-based mobile payment protocol

The recent advancements in the Internet of Things (IoT) has promoted for finding or localizing objects with different technologies. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has been widely used in indoor localization applications due to its ease of deployment and low cost. With passive RFID tags, an object can be localized within less than 10cm. However, passive RFID localization systems cannot provide easy localization due to its limited reading range. Using Active RFID tags will provide longer localization range to a lost object. However, while pairing the mobile phone with the tag, the phone may capture any tag in its reading range; thus, the tag pairing process may be done improperly. Alternatively, Near Field Communication (NFC) has been proposed as an extension to the RFID technology in which the reader must be within close proximity to the NFC tag for achieving the reading task. With the deployment of NFC, several mobile phone applications have been developed employing NFC in payments and contactless systems. However, due to the short localization range of NFC, it becomes extremely difficult to find a lost item. Currently, RFID and NFC have been employed in object localization systems separately. Alternatively, in this paper we propose Radio Frequency Near Communication (RFNC) is an integrated RFID- NFC system for localization of lost item. Our experiments integrating RFID and NFC technologies confirm that NFC technology can be a complement to the RFID technology rather than an alternative.

Every now and then, our lives are influenced by the development of technologies and this had changed the perception of business in several ways. Now the world is focusing on wireless devices that can be developed to have exchange of data either using internet or not. Near Field Communication (NFC) is one of the devices that has the capability to securely exchange data with its paired devices and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) is developed to broadcast a unique identifying number upon request. This paper concentrates on the security element in the NFC and RFID in the implementation of NFC technology in blood transfusion; to solve the problems of human error and to avoid from transfusing different blood types than the ones actually needed by the patient. The information in the wrist tag should be synchronized with the current hospital system. This NFC technology is also for reducing the use of paper-based documents, consequently promoting green technology. As a result, choosing the NFC or RFID based on the security features is very important for patient identification as well as moving towards green technology.

Near Field Communication (NFC) antennas are not comparable to standard communication antennas used for traditional transmission services. The geometries are complex, narrow conductor cross-sections and long loops located close to materials sensitive to electromagnetic interaction, when integrated, make the application of analytical coupling formulations inapplicable, even when it comes down to non-linear relations forced by ferrite shielding. Commercial finite element (FEM) solvers are powerful, but they do not serve the needs of NFC applications due to complexity, inadequateness and code obscuration. An intensive open source code investigation has identified one alternative solver which is capable to deal with all NFC RFID related coupling effects one can imagine. Automated scripts, the tool-chain, and geometry macros have been developed for rapid prototyping of such. Amongst other open source tools listed, the ElmerFEM solver is the most promising solver for linear and non-linear quasi-static electro-magnetic (EM) NFC problems. The solver has a powerful interface and delivers results close to reality even when computational complexity is a trade of physical resolution and memory capacity of standard commercial workstations.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short- range wireless communication technology that supports several features, one of which is an electronic payment. NFC works at a limited distance to exchange information. In terms of security, NFC technology has a gap for attackers to carry out attacks by forwarding information illegally using the target NFC network. A relay attack that occurs due to the theft of some data by an attacker by utilizing close communication from NFC is one of them. Relay attacks can cause a lot of loss in terms of material sacrifice. It takes countermeasures to overcome the problem of electronic payments with NFC technology. Detection of anomalous data is one way that can be done. In an attack, several abnormalities can be detected which can be used to prevent an attack. Markov Chain is one method that can be used to detect relay attacks that occur in electronic payments using NFC. The result shows Markov chain can detect anomalies in relay attacks in the case of electronic payment.

Nowadays, Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is being experimented for payment systems to perform purchase transactions without physical contact, without entering a PIN code or a signature. An NFC purchase transaction is mainly executed between a client's payment device (NFC bank card or NFC smartphone) and a merchant's payment device. The latter may be either an NFC point of sale machine for big traders (in a department store for example), or a simple NFC payment terminal attached to the outside of a smartphone for small traders. In this paper, we propose a new secure cloud-based NFC payment architecture for small traders: which allows them to benefit from their smartphones integrating NFC technology for use directly as NFC merchant payment devices, without needing to buy an external NFC payment terminal. In addition, the proposal introduces a new protocol aiming to secure NFC payment transactions.

Development in technology bring digital world to be border-less. It's proven through a developed technology, when trade and transaction can be done not only using real money but also virtual one. Shopping process using virtual money has even more supported by existed Near Field Communication (NFC) device. This particular device works using radio frequency. In the year of 2011, Google was integrating this device into a Android-based cell phone, which made transactions using virtual money gradually developed. E-Ticket is one of the utmost services in online trading. E-ticket is basically a paper-less electronic document, which commonly used for passenger tickets of a transportation system. One of the aims in using NFC in daily life can be implemented within public transportation application. This particular research offers a application prototype for train ticket purchasing and exterminating that use a Near Field Communication (NFC) integrated cell phone. This train ticketing application integrated with NFC device that had been planted in an Android 2.3.3 Operation System based cell phone. Designed system made for passenger interface and train conductor interface. NFC technology applied within two created applications. Cell phone that is used within this research is Google Nexus S, which has been integrated with NFC device; therefore created application can provide a circumstance where applications for passenger and conductor are able to work as a single entity of train ticketing application.