NXP simplifies NFC security applications

What’s new: NXP Semiconductors has announced MIFARE DUOX, their first NFC contactless IC in its class to combine asymmetric and symmetric cryptography in a single product. This helps to simplify security for NFC applications, such as electric vehicle (EV) charging authentication, secure car access, and other access management applications, by reducing the complexity of key management and key distribution. The combination of enhanced security, asymmetric authentication and advanced features enables high performing, highly secure, and cost-effective NFC system solutions.

Why it matters: the smart city increasingly relies on NFC-enabled applications, which deliver convenient tap-to-access capabilities. MIFARE DUOX serves a variety of applications, ranging from EV charging and secure car access to corporate access management solutions.  MIFARE DUOX combines asymmetric and symmetric cryptography to make key management and distribution significantly easier, utilising the public key infrastructure (PKI) concept.

“In fast-growing verticals like EV charging authentication or secure car access, we’re enabling the industry to reduce the complexity of key distribution and management, without compromising on contactless transaction speed or product versatility,” said André Perchthaler, Senior Director, MIFARE, NXP. “MIFARE DUOX delivers new features, as well as versatile configuration options and settings to support more flexible NFC system solutions, while also delivering cost-efficiency and high security.”

More details: MIFARE DUOX combines asymmetric and symmetric cryptography to simplify and increase flexibility in key management and distribution, including asymmetric elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and symmetric AES-256 cryptography functionality. It also offers enhanced security features, such as Proximity Check to prevent relay attacks and Transaction Signature to prove the authenticity of executed NFC transactions.

MIFARE DUOX is Common Criteria EAL 6+ certified on both the hardware and software layers, making it suitable for high-security industries. Designed for robust environments, including outdoor and automotive use cases, MIFARE DUOX is ISO/SAE 21434 compliant, MISRA-C compliant, supports automotive industry requirements and offers an extended operating temperature range of –40°C to +105°C.

MIFARE DUOX enables true multi-application and multi-purpose use cases through its flexible file system architecture. This also includes post-issuance application installation on one IC, across many different card issuers and service providers. End users are only required to carry one NFC-enabled MIFARE DUOX smartcard in their pocket, which hosts multiple different applications, such as corporate access, EV charging, user authorisation, loyalty programmes, and many more, on a single device, delivering increased convenience for end users.

MIFARE DUOX is currently available.