Long Distance Relay Attack

Contactless smart cards are used to securely store data and to authorize the execution of sensitive operations. Their contactless interface represents a mixed blessing, allowing fast operations but also exposing such devices to potential attacks. Relay attacks are among the most powerful attacks applicable against contactless smart cards, allowing a contactless reader to interact with a physically far away card establishing a communication channel between them. In this paper we prove that it is possible to conduct such an attack on a geographical scale, basically without any constraints on the reader and card positions and reaching a relay distance of several kilometers, probably the first example in the literature for contactless smart cards, using cheap and off-the-shelf hardware and software tools.

SPORTIELLO Luigi;  CIARDULLI Andrea; 

2014-01-27

Springer-Verlag

JRC81186

0302-9743,   

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-41332-2_5,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC81186,   

10.1007/978-3-642-41332-2_5,