Towards a secure Cloud of Secure Elements concepts and experiments with NFC mobiles

Abstract

This paper introduces an innovative concept dealing with Cloud of Secure Elements (CSE), remotely accessed from NFC enable smartphones. The Near Field Communication (NFC) technology enables proximity and mobile applications dealing with payment, ticketing or access control. The idea behind CSE is to host credentials in connected mobiles, which establish secure sessions with secure elements stored in dedicated grids, thanks to secure NFC proxies. We analyze the properties, such as security, naming, localization, and caching needed by relay protocols used for communication between mobiles and Grid of Secure Elements (GoSE). We present an experimental platform comprising a NFC Android mobile, a NFC proxy, and a grid. Finally observed performances are analyzed and discussed in order to build up an improved version from this first platform.