Handheld wireless authentication key and secure documents storage for the Internet of Everything

Abstract

In this paper, a novel approach for user authentication in Internet of Everything, called “wireless key” is studied. While the majority of existing solutions suggest a wireless key to be a battery-powered device with considerable computational power, we propose to use passive NFC tags instead. In our approach, all the computations are performed by the service the user is authenticating to and thus no computational power and no battery on the key side is required. This approach allows minimizing the device size and significantly reducing the costs. To ensure security of data stored on the tag we propose a transparent data encryption mechanism constructed on top of strong cryptographic primitives. In addition to the authentication-related feature, we have designed a system that enables secure storage of documents on the same tag making it capable of saving ID cards, bank cards, licenses, etc. The presented approach allows on-the-fly validation of any stored document by the entity that issued it as well as by any other entity granted such permissions. Correctness and a security level of the system have been assessed via the analytical study and validated through a hardware prototype. The algorithms and protocols described in the paper are also applicable to any other carrier technology including Bluetooth Low Energy and Wireless USB.