Secure Smartphone-Based NFC Payment to Prevent Man-in-the-Middle Attack

Smartphone-based Near-Field Communication (NFC) is considered as a convenient method of payment as there is no additional authentication from the user. However, security threats like man-in-the-middle attack and eavesdropping are inevitable for this payment method, since there are no physical controls that restrict the transmission. Several security protocols have been proposed to mitigate these threats. Still, those protocols require certificates that involve many communications and computational costs, which consumes more resources on client's smartphones. To address this problem, a method was proposed using symmetric cryptography to provide more efficient security protocol against threat in smartphone-based NFC mobile payments. The protocol is originally used on short-range wireless communication.