A secure and practical key management mechanism for NFC read-write mode

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short-range communication technology and has been applied around the world. The most common service of NFC will be micropayments. Technically, the card emulation mode of NFC will simulate mobile devices such as cell phones into stored value cards, and then debit from external readers. Apart from simulating cell phones as stored value cards, read-write mode of NFC enables the ability of devices to read and write external cards. In the context of micropayments, cell phone can be as the POS devices to read the balances from external cards and perform the actions of debiting or storing value. In this application condition, it is important to store keys of external cards securely when reading and writing. First, we discuss the security issues of key storage of NFC devices as reading and writing external card, analyze the possible risk of every solution. Last, we propose a secure and practical NFC key management mechanism and apply it on contactless mobile debit. According to the implementing results, the mechanism performs well in the efficacy and the user satisfaction.