nShield: a noninvasive NFC security system for mobiledevices

Abstract

The Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is gaining increasing popularity among mobile users. However, as a relatively new and developing technology, NFC may also introduce security threats that make mobile devices vulnerable to various malicious attacks. This work presents the first system study on the feasibility of and defense again passive NFC eavesdropping. Our experiments show that commodity NFC-enabled mobile devices can be eavesdropped from up to 240 cm away, which is at least an order of magnitude of the intended NFC communication distance. This finding challenges the general perception that NFC is largely immune to eavesdropping because of its short working range. We then present the design of a hardware security system called nShield. With a small form factor, nShield can be attached to the back of mobile devices to attenuate the signal strength against passive eavesdropping. At the same time, the absorbed RF energy is scavenged by nShield for its perpetual operation. nShield intelligently determines the right attenuation level that is just enough to sustain reliable data communication. We implement a prototype of nShield, and evaluate its performance via extensive experiments. Our results show that nShield has low power consumption (23 uW), can harvest significant amount of power (55 mW), and adaptively attenuates the signal strength of NFC in a variety of realistic settings, while only introducing insignificant delay (up to 2.2 s).