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Near-field communication (NFC) is one of the essential technologies in the Internet of Things (IoT) that has facilitated mobile payment across different services. The technology has become increasingly popular, as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have revolutionized how payment systems can be designed. However, this technology is subject to security problems, such as man-in-the-middle attacks, double-spending, and replay attacks, raising the need to incorporate other solutions such as blockchain technology. Concerns about the security and privacy of payments using NFC technology raise the need to adopt blockchain-based cryptocurrency payment. For instance, NFC payment has been criticized for a lack of measures to counter potential attacks, such as brute force or double-spending. Thus, incorporating blockchain technology is expected to improve the security features of the NFC mobile payment protocol and improve user experience. Blockchain technology has been praised for enabling fair payment, as it permits direct transactions without engaging a third party. Therefore, integrating blockchain cryptocurrency in IoT devices will revolutionize the NFC payment method and provide value transfer using IoT devices. Combining NFC with blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies is necessary to address security and privacy problems. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential behind incorporating blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in the NFC payment protocol.
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Touch-Based Magnetic Communication through Your Hand
Near field communication (NFC), which emerged only a decade ago, has been rapidly adopted in business services including point-of-sale (POS) systems, payments, identification, ticketing, and various other types of services. NFC offers great and varied promise in providing secure and implicit paired communication capability in smartphones. As a short-range wireless communication technology, the level of "secure" is contributed by the short-range nature. Compared with other competitive technologies, NFC achieves physical-level security but sacrifices convenience. For example, NFC cannot achieve device-free or hands-free payment transactions like the service provided by PayPal called PayPal beacon which utilizes Bluetooth-low-energy (BLE) technology. In this paper, we propose a low-cost wearable device that can achieve better physical-level security than NFC provides. This system is compatible with existing NFC-based POS systems and can help users realize a convenient hands-free payment transaction. Specifically, a custom NFC wristband was designed to channel its magnetic field through the human arm. By confining the magnetic field in NFC to the area around the body, we could minimize energy radiation, reduce the possibility of communication sniffing and hijackings, and improve security. To evaluate this approach, we conducted various experiments via different configurations. The results showed that the communication range for the human body channel was greater than that of the air and water channels. In addition, through this study we demonstrated that the human body is a naturally secure channel, and hacking and nearby interference are minimized during such communication. Our system also defines a new way of communication, for example, people can share confidential information with a simple handshake without pulling out and touching, or tapping smartphones.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1637371
- PAR ID:
- 10092484
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2018 IEEE International Congress on Internet of Things (ICIOT)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIOT.2018.00009
