MIFARE

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MIFARE is reputedly the most widely installed contactless smartcard technology in the world with 500 million smart card chips and 5 million reader modules sold. The technology is owned by NXP Semiconductors. With the respective busines sites in Hamburg, Germany and in Gratkorn, Austria.

The MIFARE technology is based upon the ISO 14443 Type A 13.56 MHz contactless smart card standard.

The technology is embodied in both cards and readers (also referred to as a Proximity Coupling Device).

The MIFARE name covers 2 really different kind of contactless cards :

MIFARE Standard (or Classic) cards employ a proprietary high-level protocol instead of ISO 14443-4, with a Philips proprietary security protocol for authentication and ciphering. MIFARE UltraLight cards employ the same protocol, but without the security part.
MIFARE ProX, and SmartMX, are NXP Semiconductors brand names for smartcards that comply to ISO 14443-4 (T=CL).

1 MIFARE Standard
2 MIFARE T=CL cards
3 MIFARE DESFire
4 History
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] MIFARE Standard

The MIFARE Classic and MIFARE UltraLight cards are fundamentally just memory storage devices, where the memory is divided into segments and blocks with simple security mechanisms for access control. They are ASIC based and therefore have limited computational power. Thanks to their low cost and reliability, those cards are widely used for electronic wallet, access control, corporate ID cards, transportation or stadium ticketing.

The MIFARE Standard 1k offers about 768 bytes of data storage, split into 16 sectors; each sector is protected by two different keys, called A and B. They can be programmed for operations like reading, writing, increasing value blocks, etc.). MIFARE Standard 4k offers 3 kB split into 64 sectors.

The MIFARE UltraLight has only 512 bits of memory (i.e. 64 bytes), without security. This card is so inexpensive it is often used for disposable tickets.

[edit] MIFARE T=CL cards

MIFARE ProX and SmartMX are microprocessor based cards. The hardware does nothing on its own, it has to be programmed with dedicated software - an operating system. Most of the time, the microprocessor is coupled to a co-processor dedicated to fast cryptographic computations (e.g., Triple DES, AES, RSA, etc.). These Cards are capable to execute complex operations as secure and fast as known from contact based cards, which includes Java based operating systems such as JCOP.

Depending on the installed software, the card can be used for almost any kind of application. This kind of card is mostly used where a high level of security is required (e.g., secure travel documents, electronic passports, payment card, etc.)

[edit] MIFARE DESFire

The MIFARE DESFire is a special release of Philips SmartMX platform. It is sold already programmed with a general purpose software (the DESFire operating system) that offers more or less the same functions as MIFARE Standard (4kB data storage split into 16 areas) but with higher flexibility, stronger triple-DES security, and faster T=CL communication.

The typical read/write distance between card and reader is 10 cm (4 inches), but actual distance depends on the field power generated by the reader and its antenna size.

The simplicity of the basic cards means that they are inexpensive, which is largely the reason for their success in large-scale deployments, such as Oyster card.

[edit] History

1994 — MIFARE Standard 1k contactless technology introduced.
1996 — First transport scheme in Seoul using MIFARE Standard 1k.
1997 — MIFARE PRO with Triple DES coprocessor introduced.
1999 — MIFARE PROX with PKI coprocessor introduced.
2001 — MIFARE UltraLight introduced.
2002 — MIFARE DESFire introduced, microprocessor based product.
2004 — MIFARE DESFire SAM introduced, secure infrastructure counterpart of MIFARE DESFire.

Mifare was developed by Mikron, which stands for MIkron FARE-collection System. It was acquired by Philips in 1998. Before Mifare, Mikron developed LEGIC with contract paid by Kaba in Switzerland. Because of the LEGIC contract, Mikron developed a new chip based on their former development. Mikron licensed the Mifare technology to Atmel in the US, Philips in the Netherlands, and Siemens in Germany.

After the Philips acquisition, Hitachi contracted Mifare license with Philips which was introduced for the development of the contactless smartcard solution for NTT IC telephone card which started in 1999 and finished in 2006. In the NTT contactless IC telephone card project, 3 parties joined. They are Tokin-Tamura-Siemens, Hitachi-(Philips-contract for technical support), Denso-(Mororola-only production). NTT asked 2 version of chips, i.e. wired-logic chip (like Mifare classic) with small memory and big memory capacitance. Hitachi developed only big memory version and cut part of the memory to fit for the small memory version. Siemens developed only wired-logic chip based on their Mifare technology with some modification. Motorola tried to develop Mifare-like chip for wired-logic version but finally gave up. The project expected 1 million cards per month for start, but fell to 0.1 million per month just before they gave up the project.