Introducing MIFARE® DESFire® for Secure Data Transmission

1. What is MIFARE^®?

A MIFARE^® brand that provides contactless IC products for hitting the numerous applications is buzzing across the world. Being the family of NXP Semiconductor, it was designed in 1994 to bring evolution in public transport, contactless transit, access service for all, irrespective of time and location. Since then, the MIFARE^® ICs are getting famous among government agencies, service operators, enterprises and users as these MIFARE^® chips are inexpensive, flexible, offer control and reliable customer interactions. MIFARE^® brand provides these contactless benefits through five different contactless solutions; MIFARE^® DESFire^®, MIFARE Ultralight^®, MIFARE Plus^®, MIFARE Classic^®, and SmartMX^®.

2. Introduction MIFARE^® DESFire^®

Coming to security and encryption, MIFARE^® products are vital in providing high security and protective measures. Among MIFARE^® products, MIFARE^® DESFire^® chips are viable to carry secure data transmission.

The term DESFire is used to give a reference for DES, 2K3DES, 3K3DES, and AES cryptographic engines and algorithms to process the secure transmission of data.

The family of MIFARE^® DESFire^® is an ideal explanation for those developers and service operators who are seeking for reliable, scalable, flexible and interoperable contactless solutions.

Another eminent feature of MIFARE^® DESFire^® chips is, they are extremely small and limited in size, ensuring the developers to induce them with smartphones, wearables & wristbands, smart cards, paper tickets and much more. 

The ability of MIFARE^® DESFire^® chips to integrate seamlessly into portable gadgets enables these ICs to support multi-application smart solutions in the following areas;

• Access control
• Loyalty programs
• Identity applications
• Event ticketing
• Road tolling and parking
• Transport ticket installations or e-ticketing solutions
• Micropayment financial transaction
• Smart city applications

3. Featured Products of MIFARE^® DESFire^®

MIFARE^® DESFire^® EV3 and MIFARE^® DESFire^® light are the two featured products of MIFARE^® DESFire^® family. Let’s discuss what characteristics of these contactless IC solutions are;

MIFARE^® DESFire^® EV3

It is the third evolution and enhanced version compared to EV1 and EV2. In contrast to its pre-processors, it has improved performance, operating at broad range (up to 100 mm) and 13.56MHz along with enhanced transaction speed. All these characteristics bring contactless solutions for combined, secured and connected Smart City. Besides, it delivers the next-level of reliability and convenient connections for end-user applications and service operators.

MIFARE^® DESFire^® EV3 IC has set new bars of security levels. The software and hardware infrastructure of this chip is equipped with Common Criteria EAL 5+ certification and based on crypto algorithms as discussed above. It has transaction time to protect the devices from man-in-the-middle attacks, assuring that insiders can’t interfere while transaction.

On top of it, it has an additional feature of SUN known as Secure Unique NFC (Near Field Communication). The SUN message authentication delivers a high-level of data integrity and confidentiality. Whenever a card and ticket housed with MIFARE^® DESFire^® EV3 IC is tapped, the SUN message feature creates a unique authentication message built on a cipher-based message authentication code (CMAC). The tap-unique URL, crypto-secure SUN code is then sent to a server for verification.

MIFARE^® DESFire^® Light

MIFARE^® DESFire^® Light is considered as one of the most excellent and predefined IC choices for single user applications. It delivers not only easy integration with conventional and future systems but also offers seamless compatible options with MIFARE^® DESFire^® EV2, helping the service developers to combine with their existing solution for a large expansion.

It comes under the NFC Forum NFC Type Tag 4, making it feasible to use with the broadest range of smart devices configured with contactless reading abilities.

It includes particular protective mechanisms to support trusted services. It has five AES 128-bit keys to monitor access rights and messaging options to boost the data protection and user’s privacy. But unlike MIFARE^® DESFire^® EV3, the hardware and software of chip are certified with Common Criteria EAL 4. Thus, it can be used in legacy terminals for steadfast, vigorous detection and rapid start-up.