M.Com. (Informatics) / This research has the aim of creating a low-cost, contactless, micro-payment framework to support micro-payments for the informal taxi industry in South Africa. The informal taxi industry is a prime example of an industry that needs simple and effective payments for low-cost services where the primary medium of payment is currently cash. Challenges of currently used are the security of cash, the difficulty for the taxi driver to collect cash, and the auditability of cash from the perspective of the taxi owner. Furthermore, the taxi owner does not know the routes the taxi travels or the petrol that is used by the taxi. Micro-payment transaction volumes are rapidly increasing due to consumer need for simple and effective payments for low-cost items and services. Micro-payment technologies are rapidly growing in popularity and demand, prompting the need for financial institutions to consider investment in the technology. Contactless technology, specifically near-field communication (NFC), is contributing to the exponential growth of micro-payments. Increasingly, consumers are not required to enter security information in order to perform transactions. By bringing a compatible card within range of a suitable reader, a transaction takes place with immediate effect, with little or no involvement from payment providers and financial institutions. Complementary wireless technologies such as GPS enable a multitude of applications by offering positional and speed information. Combining GPS technology with NFC enables contactless positional payment information to be accessible, to present a unique micro-payment concept. This dissertation presents M-Thinta, a low-cost contactless micro-payment model. The M-Thinta prototype demonstrates the real-world operation of the M-Thinta model. The prototype demonstrates that it is possible to create a functional low-cost, contactless micro-payment platform by combining a number of standard low-cost components.

This master's thesis deals with application design and implementation of secured communication between smartphones. Analyses issues of cross-platform portability between operating systems, its differences and common features. It shows an overview of Android OS architecture and its individual layers. Thesis describes basic principles of secured communication in the modern cryptography and implementation of application for mobile platforms. Also shows an overview of modern mobile technologies such as NFC (Near Field Communication) and Bluetooth. This thesis reveals basic architecture and the way how it fits into concept of secured communication. It also describes the architecture of application and concept of secured communication, which is then implemented. In conclusion is summarization of achieved results and possible extensions of implemented application.

Wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes communicate securely using pre-installed cryptographic keys. Although key pre-installation makes nodes less expensive, the technical process of installing keys prevents average users from deploying and controlling their own WSNs. Wireless pairing enables users to set up WSNs without pre-installing keys, but current pairing techniques introduce numerous concerns regarding security, hardware expense, and usability. This thesis introduces dynamic Near Field Communication (NFC) pairing, a new pairing technique designed for WSNs. This pairing overcomes the limitations of both key pre-installation and current pairing techniques. Dynamic NFC pairing is as secure as using pre-installed keys, requires only inexpensive NFC hardware, and is easy to use since the user simply holds nodes close together to add them to a network. A sample application shows the power of dynamic NFC pairing. The user adds sensors and actuators to a WSN by holding each node close to a central node or network coordinator. Data readings stream instantly from each sensor to a web page where the user may view data as well as click buttons to cause events to occur on the actuators. This happens quickly and securely without exposing the user to the complexity of cryptographic keys.

In the first part, the background of electronic money is explained, then it provides a detailed account of how it has evolved in Africa, where there has been a huge success, given the advantages and applications it has, and how it has been working. Elsewhere, other models of electronic money that are emerging in the world, such as Google Wallet, Apple Pay, and experiences in Peru as Wanda and Your Mobile Money.In the third part, some aspects of the recent regulation of electronic money in Peru are required by Act No. 29985, which regulates the basic characteristics of electronic money. Finally, it details the recent proposal that ASBANC has been working on through the Model Peru, as well as technological and regulatory risks that still must be faced. / En una primera parte se explica los antecedentes del dinero electrónico, luego se pasa a exponer detalladamente de cómo éste se ha desarrollado en África, donde ha tenido un enorme éxito dadas las ventajas y aplicaciones que tiene, y la manera como viene funcionando. En otra parte se señalan otros modelos de dinero electrónico que vienen surgiendo en el mundo, tales como Google Wallet, Apple Pay, y experiencias en Perú como el de Wanda y Tu Dinero Móvil.En la tercera parte se precisan algunos aspectos de la reciente regulación del dinero electrónico en el Perú, mediante la Ley Nº 29985, que regula las características básicas del Dinero Electrónico. Finalmente se detalla la reciente propuesta que viene trabajando ASBANC, a través del Modelo Perú, así como los riesgos tecnológicos y regulatorios que aún se debe afrontar.

In this report we examine the NFC (Near Field Communication) technology as far as the development has come until today. We adress different use areas and explain the technical funcionality. By using data collection methods as a specialist interview and also a survery we want to detect potential risks and safety-issues in implementation of the new technology. Our main-focus in this report is to examine how NFC can play an important role in the developement of social interaction and social media. By compiling our data and research materials we will analyze and present a report conslusion. In our conclusion we will introduce our thoughts about the technology as NFC gets more and more common in our physical lives and also propose further research-areas. We will share potential risks about the technology as it is developing to alert future researchers and developers, but also pay attention to the opportunities the technology may bring. / Med vår studie har vi valt att undersöka tekniken NFC (eng. Near Field Communication) så långt som utvecklingen har kommit i dagsläget. Vi redogör kring vad det finns för olika användningsområden och hur NFC fungerar ur ett tekniskt perspektiv. Genom att intervjua en person som arbetar nära tekniken samt utföra en enkätundersökning vill vi upptäcka potentiella säkerhetsrisker som medföljer implementeringen av tekniken. Studiens huvudfokus är att undersöka hur och om NFC kan ha en viktig roll i utvecklingen och framtiden för sociala medier och interaktion. Med den data vi samlar in under studiens gång kommer vi analysera, diskutera och komma fram till en slutsats. Vi kommer att delge våra tankar kring teknologin då den blir mer och mer vanlig i våra fysiska liv och föreslå vidare forskningsområden. Vi vill uppmärksamma framtida forskare och utvecklare av NFC om potentiella risker som tekniken medför, men också de möjligheter som tekniken öppnar upp.

Utveckling av teknik skapar ständigt nya möjligheter men innebär också stora förändringar för företag och organisationer. Mobiltelefoner, surfplattor, bärbara datorer, mobilkommunikation och molnteknik gör det möjligt idag att inte längre vara bunden av tid, plats eller en enhet för att kunna arbeta. Förändringen innebär att en ny typ av flexibla och yteffektiva kontor med inga fasta arbetsplatser blir allt vanligare. Problemet med de så kallade flexkontoren är att veta var eller när en kollega befinner sig på kontoret är inte lika självklart, framförallt om det är stort kontor med flera våningsplan. Målsättningen med detta arbete är att ta fram och implementera en inomhuspositioneringstjänst eller en så kallad Location-Based Service, till företaget Connecta AB. Tjänsten ska göra det möjligt för användare att med hjälp av sin mobiltelefon dela med sig av sin nuvarande arbetsplats i en kontorsmiljö. Resultatet av arbetet är en Location Based Service som gör det möjligt för en användare att med hjälp av en Androidtelefon med stöd för kortdistanskommunikationstekniken Near Field Communcication att dela med sig av sin nuvarande arbetsplats. Den molnbaserade serverlösningen Windows Azure används för att lagra registrerade arbetsplatser. / Development of technology constantly creates new opportunities but it can also mean major chang-es for companies and organizations. Today phones, tablets, laptops, mobile communications and cloud technology make it possible to be no longer bound by the time, location or device in order to work. The change means that a new office type that is more flexible and space efficient due to no fixed workplaces, is becoming more common. A problem with this type of offices that are known as flex-offices is that it is not obvious where or when a colleague is in the office, especially if it is large office with multiple floors. The aim of this work is to develop and implement a Location-Based Service for the company Connecta AB. The service will enable users to use their mobile phone to share their current workplace location in an office environment. The result of this work is a Location-Based Service that enables a user to use an Android phone with support for Near Field Communcication to share their current workplace position. The cloud-based server solution, Windows Azure is used to store indexed workplace positions.

Företaget Hajenterprise vill göra en forskning inom kommunikation för att hantera kontaktlösa betalningar för att kunna ta betalt kontaktlöst med hjälp av mobilen. Idag används bankkort för att betala för de flesta saker. Nya betalningssätt har rört sig mot kontaktlösa köp med hjälp av smarta telefoner och NFC-teknologier. Smarta telefoner har börjat användas mer och mer i kontaktlösa köp mot point of sale (POS) terminaler. Skulle det då gå att kunna ta bort POS-terminaler och använda smarta telefoner som POS-terminaler? För att besvara detta behövdes tester utföras för att se ifall en smart telefon skulle kunna läsa ett bankkort och behandla bankkortets information. Bankkort kunde läsas av de smarta telefonerna men informationen från bankkortet kunde inte användas av den smarta telefonen för att genomföra en betalning. Detta var eftersom beroende på telefon, öppnades Samsung, Google eller Apple pay. En smart telefon kunde alltså ta emot information från ett bankkort men telefonen kunde inte använda den information för att utföra en betalning på en terminal. Utöver forskningen av olika betalningssätt, skapades en applikation där betalning skulle kunna utföras från en mobil till en annan mobil. Detta skulle ske med hjälp av Near Field Communication (NFC) och blockchain, eftersom Hajenterprise vill ha en prototyp-applikation som skulle kunna betala och ta betalt över NFC mot deras blockchain. JavaScript användes för att skapa en react native applikation som kunde fungera på både Android och iOS. Detta lade grunden så att Hajenterprise kunde använda sitt blockchain-api för mobila betalningar. / The company Hajenterprise wanted to research the area of contactless payments to see if it’s possible to Pay contactless with a mobile phone. Today bank cards are used to pay for most things. New payment methods have moved toward contactless purchases using smart phones and NFC-technologies. Smart phones have begun to be used more and more in contactless purchases at point of sale (POS) terminals. The possibility to remove POS-terminals and use smartphones instead as POS-terminals could make it easier and faster to pay. To test this, several tests were needed to see if a smartphone could read a bank card and process the card's information. Bank cards could be read by the smartphone but the information from the bank card could not be used by the smartphone to make a payment. This was because depending on the phone, Samsung, Google or Apple Pay was opened. Thus, a smart phone could receive information from a card but the phone could not use that information to make a payment at a terminal. In addition, an application was created where one could make payments from one mobile to another mobile. This would be done using Near Field Communication (NFC) and blockchain, as Hajenterprise wanted a prototype-application that could pay and charge over NFC against their blockchain. JavaScript was used to create a react native application that could work on both Android and iOS. This laid the foundation for Hajenterprise to use its blockchain API for mobile payments.

The lack of medication adherence leads to an incremental risk of diseases which can be a major burden on the individual, healthcare system, and society. Hence, healthcare professionals have a central role and should manage, guide, educate, and make their patient more involved in their treatment and thereby promoting a better medication adherence. Medication adherence is a great challenge for many patients with chronic conditions, elderly patient, or patient prescribed to long-term medication. The rapid development and deployment of mobile phones in the healthcare industry has an important role to play in this area and has led to the development of new phone features and applications that can help both caregivers and patients with managing and monitoring medication intakes. This development and support of mobile phones and applications have created and improved doctor-patient interaction. Today, there is no easy way for healthcare professionals to monitor and help patients with their medication intakes. A solution to this problem is to develop a mobile application that communicates with a smart pillbox via near field communication (NFC) to monitor, manage, and improve patient’s medication intakes in an easy and accessible manner. Using NFC as a communication technology allows data to be wirelessly transferred from phone to pillbox and vice versa. This solution will help healthcare professionals to create better treatment conditions and fewer side effects for their patients. These patients will be more knowledgeable and motivated to take greater responsibility in following doctor’s instructions, thereby improving their treatment process. The application is tested and evaluated during every iteration phase of the development process. These tests have been conducted by allowing healthcare professionals to test the application and provide feedback on their experience when using the app. Conducting these tests have helped with generating new ideas, features, and functionalities, but also helped to improve the user interface to make the application as user-friendly as possible. / Bristen på medicinering följsamhet leder till en ökad risk för sjukdomar som kan vara en stor belastning för individen, vårdsystemet och samhället. Hälsooch sjukvårdspersonal har därför en central roll och bör hantera, vägleda, utbilda och göra patienten mer delaktig i behandlingen och därigenom främja en bättre medicinering följsamhet. Medicinering följsamhet är en stor utmaning för många patienter med kroniska tillstånd, äldre patient eller patient som är ordinerad för långvarig medicinering. Den snabba utvecklingen och användningen av mobiltelefoner inom vårdindustrin har en viktig roll att spela i detta område och har lett till utvecklingen av nya funktioner och applikationer som kan hjälpa både vårdgivare och patienter med att hantera och övervaka medicinsk intag. Denna utveckling och support av mobiltelefoner och applikationer har skapat och förbättrat interaktion mellan läkare och patient. Idag finns det inget enkelt sätt för sjukvårdspersonal att övervaka och hjälpa patienter med sina medicinintag. En lösning på detta problem är att utveckla en mobilapplikation som kommer att kommunicera med en smart pillbox via nära fältkommunikation (eng. Near Field Communication, NFC) för att övervaka, hantera och förbättra patientens medicinintag på ett enkelt och tillgängligt sätt. Med hjälp av NFC som kommunikationsteknik kommer data att överföras trådlöst från telefon till pillerdosa och vice versa. Denna lösning kommer att hjälpa vårdpersonal att skapa bättre behandlingsförhållanden och färre biverkningar för sina patienter. Dessa patienter kommer i sin tur att vara mer kunniga och motiverade att ta större ansvar i efterföljande läkares instruktioner och därigenom förbättra deras behandlingsprocess. Applikationen har testat och utvärderat under varje iteration av utvecklingsprocessen. Dessa tester har utförts genom att låta vårdpersonal testa applikationen och ge feedback på hur dem upplevar applikationen. Dessa tester hjälper till att skapa nya idéer, funktioner och funktioner som bör ingå i den slutliga applikationen, men också bidra till att förbättra användargränssnittet för att göra ansökan så användarvänlig som möjligt.

Att betala med kort är idag standardiserat, men något som också är väldigt vanligt är att betala kontaktlöst. Detta kan göras både med ett kontaktlöst kort eller med en smarttelefon. Teknologin som möjliggör detta är närfältskommunikation. Examensarbetet undersöker hur säkerheten i dessa betalningsmetoder är uppbyggd, vad det finns för säkerhetsproblem samt hur användningen kan se ut i framtiden. Den primära frågeställningen var att undersöka om det är lika säkert eller till och med säkrare att använda en smarttelefon för kontaktlösa betalningar jämfört med ett kontaktlöst kort. För att undersöka detta, gjordes en omfattande litteraturstudie och en enkätundersökning. Resultatet av examensarbetet visade på att det fanns olika typer av hot och sårbarheter som exempelvis avlyssning, modifikation och korruption av data, reläattacker, skadlig applikation och programvara, svag autentisering och manipulation av applikationer. Det fanns även flertalet aspekter som påverkade hur väl dessa hot kunde utföras, bland annat tokenisering, kryptering men även det korta avståndet som krävs och social ingenjörskonst. Det upptäcktes även att attackytan skiljde sig mellan metoderna. Smarttelefonen hade flertalet hot och sårbarheter som ofta baseras på att det finns ett användargränssnitt, att enheten har ett annat användningsområde, och exempelvis skadlig programvara och ”rootade” enheter. När en enhet är ”rootad” betyder det att användaren får en annan typ av åtkomstkontroll. Enkätundersökningen visade att ungefär hälften av deltagarna kan tänka sig använda smarttelefonen i framtiden för att utföra kontaktlösa betalningar. / To pay with a card is standardized today, but something that is also very common is to pay contactless. This is possible to do with a contactless card or with a smartphone. The technology that makes this possible is Near Field Communication. This thesis examines how the security in these payment methods is structured, which security issues exists but also how the use may look in the future. The thesis also includes to investigate if it is as safe or even safer to use a smartphone for contactless payments compared to a contactless card. To investigate this, an extensive literature study and a questionnaire survey was conducted. The results of the thesis showed that there were different types of threats and vulnerabilities such as eavesdropping, data modification, data corruption, relay-attacks but also malicious application and software, weak authentication, and manipulation of applications. However, there were also several aspects that affected how well these threats could be carried out, including tokenization, encryption but also the short distance required and social engineering. It was also discovered that the attack surface differed between the two methods. The smartphone had several threats and vulnerabilities many of them existed since there is a user interface, and that the device is used in other ways. For example, malware and “rooted” devices, when a device is “rooted” it means that the user gets another type of access control for the device. The survey showed that about half of the participants may be willing to use a smartphone in the future to make contactless payments.

Counterfeit products, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, have plagued the international community for decades. To combat this problem, many anti-counterfeiting approaches have been proposed. They use either Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Near Field Communication (NFC) physical tags affixed to the products. Current anti-counterfeiting approaches detect two counterfeiting attacks: (1) modifications to a product's tag details, such as changing the expiration date; and (2) cloning of a genuine product's details to reuse on counterfeit products. In addition, these anti-counterfeiting approaches track-and-trace the physical locations of products as the products flow through supply chains. Existing approaches suffer from two main drawbacks. They cannot detect tag reapplication attacks, wherein a counterfeiter removes a legitimate tag from a genuine product and reapplies it to a counterfeit or expired product. Second, most existing approaches typically rely on a central server to authenticate products. This is not scalable and creates tremendous processing burden on the server, since significant volumes of products flood through the supply chain's nodes. In addition, centralized supply chains require substantial data storage to store authentication records for all products. Moreover, as with centralized systems, traditional supply chains inherently have the problem of a single-point of failure. The thesis of this dissertation is that a robust, scalable, counterfeiting-resistant supply chain that addresses the above drawbacks and can be simultaneously achieved by (i) using a combination of NFC tags on products and a distributed ledger such as blockchain for reapplication-proof, decentralized, and transparent product authentication (ii) a novel game-theoretical consensus protocol for enforcing true decentralization, and enhancing the protocol's security and performance. In this dissertation, we first propose a new Tag Reapplication Detection (TRD) system to detect reapplication attacks using low-cost NFC tags and public key cryptography. To detect reapplication attacks, TRD tracks the number of times a tag has been read in the supply chain using a 'central' authentication server. Second, leveraging the blockchain technology, we propose the Block-Supply Chain, a transformation of TRD into a decentralized supply chain. In this chain, each node maintains a blockchain (distributed public ledger) per product. This blockchain comprises chained blocks, where each is an authentication event. The Block-Supply Chain can detect tag reapplication attacks and can replace the centralized supply chain design, thus overcoming the centralization issues. One of the fundamental characteristics of blockchain technology is the consensus protocol. Consensus protocols ensure that all nodes in the blockchain network agree on the validity of a block to be included in the public ledger. The first and most popular of the existing consensus protocols is Proof of Work (PoW). However, PoW requires massive computational effort, resulting in high energy and computing resources consumption. Alternatively, Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) protocols, such as Tendermint, were adapted in blockchain technology to be efficient and easy to implement. Nevertheless, not all of BFT protocols guarantee true decentralization, and they are mostly based on fixed-validators. BFT fixed-validators protocols typically rely on fixed, static validators responsible for validating all newly proposed blocks. This opens the door for adversaries to launch several attacks on these validators, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and Eclipse attacks. In contrast, a truly decentralized protocol ensures that variable sets of anonymous validators execute the blocks' validations. Building on this observation, we propose the TrueBFT, a truly decentralized BFT-based consensus protocol that does not require PoW and randomly employs a different set of validators on each block's proposal. TrueBFT is designed for permissioned blockchains (in such blockchains, the participants who can transact on the blockchain are limited, and each participant is required to have permission to join the system). Our simulations show that TrueBFT offers remarkable performance with a satisfactory level of security compared to the state-of-the-art protocol Tendermint. Another issue with current consensus protocols, particularly the BFT, is that the majority of them do not take the number of employed validators into consideration. The number of validators in a blockchain network influences its security and performance substantially. In response, we integrate a game theoretical model into TrueBFT that analyzes the risk likelihood of each proposer (i.e., the node that creates and proposes the new block). Consequently, each time a new block is proposed, the 'number of validators' becomes proportional to the risk likelihood block's proposer. Additionally, the game model reinforces the honest behavior of the validators by rewarding honest validators and punishing dishonest ones. Together, TRD, Block-Supply Chain, and the game-theoretical TrueBFT consensus protocol enable robust, scalable, decentralized anti-counterfeiting supply chain that is resistant to tag reapplication attacks, as well as attacks to consensus protocols such as DDoS and Eclipse attacks.