DCS - Securing Short-Range Wireless Communication

Privacy in the connected world is a huge user concern. Short range communication utilizes various inter-entity forms such as end-terminal, token and mobile. Services like micro-payments applied especially in point of sale (POS) terminals and peer-to-peer (P2P) communication mainly use near-field communication (NFC) protocol. This radio-based communication link may be compromised through different attacks including eavesdropping, data corruption and Man-In-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. Existing solutions provide complex proposals mainly for an authentication phase prior to data communication. In this article, we expand on a new key agreement mechanism, dual channel security (DCS) that aims at overcoming the vulnerabilities and attacks that are arising from well-known protocols. This model consists of one major component: an optical key-agreement link. It will ensure the achievement of the security requirements against common eavesdropping, data corruption and MITM attacks. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance and effectiveness of our approach through several tests and comparisons.