The Internet of Things (IoT) is gradually integrated into our daily life, which can be applied in vehicles, smart appliances, logistics, etc. As IoT brings benefits to people, its safety issues raise the alarm.
The Wireless Network Security Industry Alliance of Zhongguancun (WAPI Alliance) is the pioneer in this field. It has encouraged its members to develop the key safety protocol technology, tag and reader air interface security (TRAIS), which is adopted by the recently published ISO/IEC 29167-16:2022, Information technology—Automatic identification and data capture techniques—Part 16: Crypto suite ECDSA-ECDH security services for air interface communications.
The international standard offers a crypto suite based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for the ISO/IEC 18000 series of standards. It specifies the use of elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key agreement in a secure channel establishment and the use of elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) in an authentication mechanism.
Defined in alignment with existing air interfaces, crypto suite for ECDSA-ECDH for air interface for RFID systems is specified in the standard. Also, a mutual authentication method and cipher use methods are provided. ECDSA-ECDH cipher is a high-weight security protocol especially for active radio frequency identification (RFID) system, aiming at meeting the needs of those scenarios with high level security requirement.
ISO/IEC 29167-16:2022 indicates China’s efforts in developing key IoT technologies, which can be applied globally to promote connectivity and shared governance. In total, China has contributed to the publication of 7 international standards covering safety of RFID and NFC technologies.
The standard will make global RFID products and systems more sound and reliable, so that users can enjoy the convenience brought by IoT, said Zhang Lulu, Secretary-General of the WAPI Alliance.
Source: China Standardization Magazine, 1st issue, 2023.
