A Practical Set-Membership Proof for Privacy-Preserving NFC Mobile Ticketing

TL;DR

This paper presents a privacy-preserving NFC mobile ticketing protocol that ensures user anonymity, prevents tracking, and is efficient enough for real-world deployment using standard NFC SIM cards.

Contribution

It introduces a practical set-membership proof that avoids costly pairing computations, and optimizes signature schemes for efficient NFC transactions, enhancing privacy and performance.

Findings

Prototype implementation on standard NFC SIM cards

Validation time of 184.25 ms when mobile is on

Validation time of 266.52 ms when mobile is off or battery is flat

Abstract

To ensure the privacy of users in transport systems, researchers are working on new protocols providing the best security guarantees while respecting functional requirements of transport operators. In this paper, we design a secure NFC m-ticketing protocol for public transport that preserves users' anonymity and prevents transport operators from tracing their customers' trips. To this end, we introduce a new practical set-membership proof that does not require provers nor verifiers (but in a specific scenario for verifiers) to perform pairing computations. It is therefore particularly suitable for our (ticketing) setting where provers hold SIM/UICC cards that do not support such costly computations. We also propose several optimizations of Boneh-Boyen type signature schemes, which are of independent interest, increasing their performance and efficiency during NFC transactions. Our m-ticketing protocol offers greater flexibility compared to previous solutions as it enables the post-payment and the off-line validation of m-tickets. By implementing a prototype using a standard NFC SIM card, we show that it fulfils the stringent functional requirement imposed by transport operators whilst using strong security parameters. In particular, a validation can be completed in 184.25 ms when the mobile is switched on, and in 266.52 ms when the mobile is switched off or its battery is flat.