Approaches for Best-Effort Relay-Resistant Channels on Standard Contactless Channels

Relay attacks is a serious and practical threat to contactless systems that is becoming more attractive with the increased use and transaction value of contactless payments. Distance-bounding is a countermeasure widely studied in academic research but it has not transferred to commercial systems. Conventional communication channels cannot achieve the theoretical properties often required for the protocol to be secure and special channels might not be feasible to adopt. Our objective is to design ‘best-effort’ distance-bounding channels suitable for real RFID systems. In this paper we discuss standard channel implementation using off-the-shelf emulators and readers, and discuss potential modifications to channels implementable on current devices that would results in more relay-resistant channel designs. We are present reference relay attacks for ISO 14443A and Felica type systems using our implemented devices.