A Privacy-Preserving Contactless Transport Service for NFC Smartphones

International audienceThe development of NFC-enabled smartphones has paved the way to new applications such as mobile payment (m-payment) and mobile ticketing (m-ticketing). However, often the privacy of users of such services is either not taken into account or based on simple pseudonyms, which does not offer strong privacy properties such as the unlinkability of transactions and minimal information leakage. In this paper, we introduce a lightweight privacy-preserving contactless transport service that uses the SIM card as a secure element. Our implementation of this service uses a group signature protocol in which costly cryptographic operations are delegated to the mobile phone

A Practical Set-Membership Proof for Privacy-Preserving NFC Mobile Ticketing

To ensure the privacy of users in transport systems, researchers are working on new protocols providing the best security guarantees while respecting functional requirements of transport operators. In this paper, we design a secure NFC m-ticketing protocol for public transport that preserves users' anonymity and prevents transport operators from tracing their customers' trips. To this end, we introduce a new practical set-membership proof that does not require provers nor verifiers (but in a specific scenario for verifiers) to perform pairing computations. It is therefore particularly suitable for our (ticketing) setting where provers hold SIM/UICC cards that do not support such costly computations. We also propose several optimizations of Boneh-Boyen type signature schemes, which are of independent interest, increasing their performance and efficiency during NFC transactions. Our m-ticketing protocol offers greater flexibility compared to previous solutions as it enables the post-payment and the off-line validation of m-tickets. By implementing a prototype using a standard NFC SIM card, we show that it fulfils the stringent functional requirement imposed by transport operators whilst using strong security parameters. In particular, a validation can be completed in 184.25 ms when the mobile is switched on, and in 266.52 ms when the mobile is switched off or its battery is flat

The survey on Near Field Communication

PubMed ID: 26057043Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging short-range wireless communication technology that offers great and varied promise in services such as payment, ticketing, gaming, crowd sourcing, voting, navigation, and many others. NFC technology enables the integration of services from a wide range of applications into one single smartphone. NFC technology has emerged recently, and consequently not much academic data are available yet, although the number of academic research studies carried out in the past two years has already surpassed the total number of the prior works combined. This paper presents the concept of NFC technology in a holistic approach from different perspectives, including hardware improvement and optimization, communication essentials and standards, applications, secure elements, privacy and security, usability analysis, and ecosystem and business issues. Further research opportunities in terms of the academic and business points of view are also explored and discussed at the end of each section. This comprehensive survey will be a valuable guide for researchers and academicians, as well as for business in the NFC technology and ecosystem.Publisher's Versio

Privacy-preserving Payments for Transportation Systems

The operation of our society heavily relies on high mobility of people. Not only our social life but also our economy and trade are built upon a system where people need to be able to move around easily. The costs for building and maintaining a suitable transportation infrastructure to satisfy those needs are high, and to charge users is thus a central requirement. This calls for well functioning payment systems satisfying the multitude of requirements that transportation systems impose on them. Electronic payment systems have many benefits over traditional cash payments as they are easy to maintain, can be more secure, reduce revenue collection costs, and can reduce the execution time of a payment. However, as a drawback, currently employed electronic payment systems usually reveal a payer’s identity during a payment which greatly infringes customer privacy. In the transportation domain this allows to generate fine grain patterns of customers’ locations. Cryptographic payment protocols called e-cash have been proposed which allow to preserve a customer’s privacy. E-cash provides provable guarantees for both security and user privacy, as it allows secure, unlinkable payments which do not reveal the identity of the payer during a payment. From a security and privacy perspective these protocols present a good solution. However, even though e-cash protocols have been proposed three decades ago, there are relatively few actual implementations. One reason for this is their high computational complexity which makes an implementation on potential mobile payment devices rather difficult. While customers usually value their privacy they often do not accept to sacrifice convenience. A fast execution of payments is thus a hard constraint, which conflicts with the computational complexity of e-cash schemes. This dissertation analyzes how e-cash can be used to solve the issue of privacy in the domain of transportation payments while satisfying the unique requirements of transportation payment systems and achieving high security and ease of use. Highlyefficient implementations of the underlying cryptographic primitives of e-cash schemes on constrained devices as they might be used in the transportation setting are presented. Based on the efficient implementations of these primitives, e-cash schemes are analyzed with regards to speed and hardware requirements. The results show that e-cash presents a good solution for privacy-preserving payments in the domain of public transport, if the number of coins that have to be spent can be limited. It is further practically shown that this limitation can be alleviated relying on the e-cash based privacy-preserving pre-payments with refunds scheme (P4R). Moreover, it is demonstrated that the promising feature of supporting the encoding of user attributes into electronic coins can be implemented at only moderate extra cost. Finally, an ecash based e-mobility payment scheme is presented which highlights the flexibility and unique advantages of e-cash based transportation payment schemes

Privacy-preserving E-ticketing Systems for Public Transport Based on RFID/NFC Technologies

Pervasive digitization of human environment has dramatically changed our everyday lives. New technologies which have become an integral part of our daily routine have deeply affected our perception of the surrounding world and have opened qualitatively new opportunities. In an urban environment, the influence of such changes is especially tangible and acute. For example, ubiquitous computing (also commonly referred to as UbiComp) is a pure vision no more and has transformed the digital world dramatically. Pervasive use of smartphones, integration of processing power into various artefacts as well as the overall miniaturization of computing devices can already be witnessed on a daily basis even by laypersons. In particular, transport being an integral part of any urban ecosystem have been affected by these changes. Consequently, public transport systems have undergone transformation as well and are currently dynamically evolving. In many cities around the world, the concept of the so-called electronic ticketing (e-ticketing) is being extensively used for issuing travel permissions which may eventually result in conventional paper-based tickets being completely phased out already in the nearest future. Opal Card in Sydney, Oyster Card in London, Touch & Travel in Germany and many more are all the examples of how well the e-ticketing has been accepted both by customers and public transport companies. Despite numerous benefits provided by such e-ticketing systems for public transport, serious privacy concern arise. The main reason lies in the fact that using these systems may imply the dramatic multiplication of digital traces left by individuals, also beyond the transport scope. Unfortunately, there has been little effort so far to explicitly tackle this issue. There is still not enough motivation and public pressure imposed on industry to invest into privacy. In academia, the majority of solutions targeted at this problem quite often limit the real-world pertinence of the resultant privacy-preserving concepts due to the fact that inherent advantages of e-ticketing systems for public transport cannot be fully leveraged. This thesis is aimed at solving the aforementioned problem by providing a privacy-preserving framework which can be used for developing e-ticketing systems for public transport with privacy protection integrated from the outset. At the same time, the advantages of e-ticketing such as fine-grained billing, flexible pricing schemes, and transparent use (which are often the main drivers for public to roll out such systems) can be retained

Conception de protocoles cryptographiques préservant la vie privée pour les services mobiles sans contact

The increasing number of worldwide mobile platforms and the emergence of new technologies such as the NFC (Near Field Communication) lead to a growing tendency to build a user's life depending on mobile phones. This context brings also new security and privacy challenges. In this thesis, we pay further attention to privacy issues in NFC services as well as the security of the mobile applications private data and credentials namely in Trusted Execution Environments (TEE). We first provide two solutions for public transport use case: an m-pass (transport subscription card) and a m-ticketing validation protocols. Our solutions ensure users' privacy while respecting functional requirements of transport operators. To this end, we propose new variants of group signatures and the first practical set-membership proof that do not require pairing computations at the prover's side. These novelties significantly reduce the execution time of such schemes when implemented in resource constrained environments. We implemented the m-pass and m-ticketing protocols in a standard SIM card: the validation phase occurs in less than 300ms whilst using strong security parameters. Our solutions also work even when the mobile is switched off or the battery is flat. When these applications are implemented in TEE, we introduce a new TEE migration protocol that ensures the privacy and integrity of the TEE credentials and user's private data. We construct our protocol based on a proxy re-encryption scheme and a new TEE model. Finally, we formally prove the security of our protocols using either game-based experiments in the random oracle model or automated model checker of security protocols.Avec l'émergence de nouvelles technologies telles que le NFC (Communication à champ proche) et l'accroissement du nombre de plates-formes mobiles, les téléphones mobiles vont devenir de plus en plus indispensables dans notre vie quotidienne. Ce contexte introduit de nouveaux défis en termes de sécurité et de respect de la vie privée. Dans cette thèse, nous nous focalisons sur les problématiques liées au respect de la vie privée dans les services NFC ainsi qu’à la protection des données privées et secrets des applications mobiles dans les environnements d'exécution de confiance (TEE). Nous fournissons deux solutions pour le transport public: une solution utilisant des cartes d'abonnement (m-pass) et une autre à base de tickets électroniques (m-ticketing). Nos solutions préservent la vie privée des utilisateurs tout en respectant les exigences fonctionnelles établies par les opérateurs de transport. À cette fin, nous proposons de nouvelles variantes de signatures de groupe ainsi que la première preuve pratique d’appartenance à un ensemble, à apport nul de connaissance, et qui ne nécessite pas de calculs de couplages du côté du prouveur. Ces améliorations permettent de réduire considérablement le temps d'exécution de ces schémas lorsqu’ils sont implémentés dans des environnements contraints par exemple sur carte à puce. Nous avons développé les protocoles de m-passe et de m-ticketing dans une carte SIM standard : la validation d'un ticket ou d'un m-pass s'effectue en moins de 300ms et ce tout en utilisant des tailles de clés adéquates. Nos solutions fonctionnent également lorsque le mobile est éteint ou lorsque sa batterie est déchargée. Si les applications s'exécutent dans un TEE, nous introduisons un nouveau protocole de migration de données privées, d'un TEE à un autre, qui assure la confidentialité et l'intégrité de ces données. Notre protocole est fondé sur l’utilisation d’un schéma de proxy de rechiffrement ainsi que sur un nouveau modèle d’architecture du TEE. Enfin, nous prouvons formellement la sécurité de nos protocoles soit dans le modèle calculatoire pour les protocoles de m-pass et de ticketing soit dans le modèle symbolique pour le protocole de migration de données entre TEE

Mobile Authentication with NFC enabled Smartphones

Smartphones are becoming increasingly more deployed and as such new possibilities for utilizing the smartphones many capabilities for public and private use are arising. This project will investigate the possibility of using smartphones as a platform for authentication and access control, using near field communication (NFC). To achieve the necessary security for authentication and access control purposes, cryptographic concepts such as public keys, challenge-response and digital signatures are used. To focus the investigation a case study is performed based on the authentication and access control needs of an educational institutions student ID. To gain a more practical understanding of the challenges mobile authentication encounters, a prototype has successfully been developed on the basis of the investigation. The case study performed in this project argues that NFC as a standalone technology is not yet mature to support the advanced communication required by this case. However, combining NFC with other communication technologies such as Bluetooth has proven to be effective. As a result, a general evaluation has been performed on several aspects of the prototype, such as cost-effectiveness, usability, performance and security to evaluate the viability of mobile authentication

State of the Art, Trends and Future of Bluetooth Low Energy, Near Field Communication and Visible Light Communication in the Development of Smart Cities

The current social impact of new technologies has produced major changes in all areas of society, creating the concept of a smart city supported by an electronic infrastructure, telecommunications and information technology. This paper presents a review of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Near Field Communication (NFC) and Visible Light Communication (VLC) and their use and influence within different areas of the development of the smart city. The document also presents a review of Big Data Solutions for the management of information and the extraction of knowledge in an environment where things are connected by an “Internet of Things” (IoT) network. Lastly, we present how these technologies can be combined together to benefit the development of the smart city