Wi-Fi and 5G 179
individuals’ privacy may be violated by monitoring and tracing of
everything relating to those individuals.
There are solutions available, such as encoding the ID in the tag or
changing the value of the tag every time it is read. These solutions rely
on middleware which is able to interpret the values of the tags or keep
track of the changing values.
Active tags can establish an authentication session, facilitating an
exchange with the reader, which then acts as an authentication server.
In this case, we need to use an electronic circuit in the tag, capable of
encrypting a text transmitted by the authentication server. However,
the encryption keys used are so short that there is a not-insignificant
danger of them being broken after a series of authentication attempts.
Numerous propositions have been made, using the anti-collision
algorithm, which serializes the reading of the tags, for authentication.
6.21. Mifare
Mifare is the most widely-used of contactless cards, with four
billion in circulation throughout the world. The name comes from the
company with developed it – Mikron; the full name of the card is
“Mikron FARE”. Mikron was bought out by Philips, which ceded
ownership of this technology to its subsidiary: NXP. There are two
different sub-types of Mifare cards: Mifare Classic, which uses only a
certain portion of the Mifare command set, and Mifare from NXP,
which implements the entire range of commands.
The cards communicate with a reader, which must be at a distance
of less than 3 centimeters. This provides a certain amount of security
for the communication, which is highly localized. However, attacks
have been carried out, using very specific readers placed a few meters
away. If we require security in a communication, the best thing to do
is to encrypt the data for transmission.
These cards are not very powerful at all, so their production costs
are extremely low. Mifare Classic cards have a 4- or 7-byte serial
number and a storage memory between 512 bytes and 4 Kbytes. The
www.it-ebooks.info
individuals’ privacy may be violated by monitoring and tracing of
everything relating to those individuals.
There are solutions available, such as encoding the ID in the tag or
changing the value of the tag every time it is read. These solutions rely
on middleware which is able to interpret the values of the tags or keep
track of the changing values.
Active tags can establish an authentication session, facilitating an
exchange with the reader, which then acts as an authentication server.
In this case, we need to use an electronic circuit in the tag, capable of
encrypting a text transmitted by the authentication server. However,
the encryption keys used are so short that there is a not-insignificant
danger of them being broken after a series of authentication attempts.
Numerous propositions have been made, using the anti-collision
algorithm, which serializes the reading of the tags, for authentication.
6.21. Mifare
Mifare is the most widely-used of contactless cards, with four
billion in circulation throughout the world. The name comes from the
company with developed it – Mikron; the full name of the card is
“Mikron FARE”. Mikron was bought out by Philips, which ceded
ownership of this technology to its subsidiary: NXP. There are two
different sub-types of Mifare cards: Mifare Classic, which uses only a
certain portion of the Mifare command set, and Mifare from NXP,
which implements the entire range of commands.
The cards communicate with a reader, which must be at a distance
of less than 3 centimeters. This provides a certain amount of security
for the communication, which is highly localized. However, attacks
have been carried out, using very specific readers placed a few meters
away. If we require security in a communication, the best thing to do
is to encrypt the data for transmission.
These cards are not very powerful at all, so their production costs
are extremely low. Mifare Classic cards have a 4- or 7-byte serial
number and a storage memory between 512 bytes and 4 Kbytes. The
www.it-ebooks.info