Practical secret key agreement for full-duplex near field communications

Abstract

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a promising short distance radio communication technology for many useful applications. Although its communication range is short, NFC alone does not guarantee secure communication and is subject to security attacks, such as eavesdropping attack. Generating a shared key and using symmetric key cryptography to secure the communication between NFC devices is a feasible solution to prevent various attacks. However, conventional Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol is not preferable for resource constrained NFC devices due to its extensive computational overhead and energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a practical, fast and energy-efficient key agreement scheme, called RIWA (Random bIts transmission with Waveform shAking), for NFC devices by exploiting its full-duplex capability. In RIWA, two devices send random bits to each other simultaneously without strict synchronization or perfect match of amplitude and phase. On the contrary, RIWA randomly introduces synchronization offset and mismatch of amplitude and phase for each bit transmission in order to prevent a passive attacker from determining the generated key. A shared bit can be established when two devices send different bits. We conduct theoretical analysis on the correctness and security strength of RIWA, and extensive simulations to evaluate its effectiveness. We build a testbed based on USRP software defined radio and conduct proof-of-concept experiments to evaluate RIWA in a real-world environment. It shows that RIWA achieves a high key generation rate about 26kbps and is immune to eavesdropping attack even when the attacker is within several centimeters away from the legitimate devices. RIWA is a practical, fast, energy-efficient, and secure key agreement scheme for resource-constrained NFC devices.

A New Frontier for IoT Security Emerging From Three Decades of Key Generation Relying on Wireless Channels

“…Theoretical key generation approaches have been proposed for IBFD mode in [216], [217]. Practical key generation testbeds relying on the IBFD capability of USRP devices and near field communication (NFC) devices are demonstrated in [218] and [219], respectively.…”

Physical Layer Key Generation in 5G and Beyond Wireless Communications: Challenges and Opportunities

“…One solution comes from the fact that the SI channel changes slower than the channel between users. At this point, theoretical CRKG approaches in IBFD mode are proposed in [ 37 , 38 ], while practical CRKG testbed with IBFD capability universal software radio peripheral (USRP) devices and near field communication (NFC) devices are demonstrated in [ 38 , 39 ], respectively. IBFD communications can noticeably boost the secret key rate in an operationally interesting regime of parameters.…”

Qualitative Assessment on Effectiveness of Security Approaches towards Safeguarding NFC Devices & Services

“…Study towards mutual authentication scheme was also carried out by Fan et al [18], [19] that implements logical operation of XOR for resisting denial-of-service attacks. Adoption of key management towards securing NFC-based devices was seen in the work presented by Jin et al [20] where the authors have presented a key agreement scheme that ensures energy efficiency using software-defined radio testbed. Literatures have also witnessed the usage of pseudonyms towards secure authentication of NFC application as seen in the work carried out by Odelu et al [21].…”