A Flexible and Lightweight ECC-Based Authentication Solution for Resource Constrained Systems

RFID-based and NFC-based applications can be found, apart from others, in security critical application fields, such as payment or access control. For this purpose, Elliptic-Curve Cryptography (ECC) is commonly used hardware integrated in resource constrained applications in order to provide authenticity and data integrity. On the one hand, specialized crypto hardware approaches provide good performance and consume low power. On the other hand, they often lack flexibility, caused, for example, by hardware integrated protocols and cryptographic parameters. Here we present a flexible and lightweight ECC-based authentication solution that takes into account resource constrained systems. This technique permits to shift parts of the computational intense ECC calculations from the resource constrained device to the authentication terminal. By employing a security controller with a small multi-purpose hardware acceleration core, high computation speed is achieved and a maximum level of flexibility is maintained at the same time. We demonstrate the feasible implementation of the proposed technique by means of an Android-based reader / smart card system, which represent a prime example of contemporary power-constrained and performance-constrained embedded systems. An ECC-based authentication can be carried out on average within 25 ms and checked against a back-end server within 66 ms in a secured manner. Thus, a secured and flexible one-way authentication system is given that shows high performance. This solution can be utilized in a wide variety of application fields, such as anti-counterfeiting, where flexibility and low chip prices are essential.