SpringCore

Optimize the standby consumption of the M519 and leverage LPCD

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An HF NFC/RFID reader or coupler usually spends most of its operating time waiting for a contactless card to arrive.

To detect this arrival, the reader or coupler must

  1. ensure continuous or quasi-continuous transmission of its carrier, since it is its own RF field (magnetic waves) that remotely powers the card,
  2. send search frames in an un-interrupted loop, using all the protocols it supports (REQA/WUPA, REQB/WUPB, Anticall, SENS_REQ, etc), to give the card the opportunity to respond as soon as it has been powered-up.

Obviously, this means that most of the operating time consists of… wasting a lot of energy, just to wait.

The Tartar Steppe (Il deserto dei Tartari) is a novel by Dino Buzzati, that tells the story of an officer, who spends all his energy waiting for the arrival of a contactless card. Well, not exactly, but, you’ve got the idea.

In the SpringSeed M519 module, and also in most other SpringCore products, the card waiting policy (polling policy) can be optimised to reduce the average power consumption of the product.

In highly demanding use cases, the LPCD (low-power card detection) feature can even dramatically reduce standby power requirement, to less than 10mA (however, this comes at the price of some implementation constraints, which you must be aware of before using this mode).

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How to configure a Puck as a reader to read a SpringPass virtual card using keyboard emulation?

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SpringCard Puck family products can be used to read contactless passes carried by NFC smartphones. In the SmartReader operating mode, the reader is standalone to run and the computer receives RFID/NFC pass data as if someone would type it on the keyboard.

SpringPass by SpringCard is a service for generating NFC passes in order to dematerialize contactless cards or RFID badges by virtualizing them on mobile phones (smartphones). On Apple iOS (iPhone) architectures, the system is based on Apple VAS technology. On Android architectures, the system is based on Google Smart Tap technology.

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How to read RFID/NFC passes with SpringCard PC/SC couplers

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SpringCard contactless PC/SC couplers (NFC/RFID HF) can be used to read contactless passes carried by NFC smartphones.

In particular, the Prox’N’Roll HSP PC/SC and the PUCK configured as PC/SC have been certified :

  • by Apple for reading NFC passes stored in the Apple Wallet application (“Apple VAS” protocol, formerly branded as “PassKit”),
  • by Google for reading NFC passes stored in the Google Pay application (“Google VAS” protocol, still branded as “Smart Tap” or now “Google Wallet”).

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Storing ECC private keys in the SpringCore’s Secure Element

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Devices in the SpringCore family feature on or more Secure Elements (SE) to store the security keys that are involved in your system. This covers both the keys used by the Smart Reader template engine or a PC/SC application for authenticating and validating the user credentials (contactless card or NFC pass) and the keys used for securing the communication between the device and the back-end system (MQTT over TLS to interact with a cloud system, secure BLE, secure UDP or TCP protocols, etc.).

Both Puck and SpringPark feature a Microchip ATECC chip (formerly an Atmel reference) to store ECC private keys (NIST P-256 curve a.k.a. secp256r1 and prime256v1). Such private keys are typically involved in three use cases:

  • To authenticate and decipher (decrypt) an Apple VAS NFC pass (Passkit),
  • To activate, authenticate and decipher (decrypt) a Google VAS NFC pass (Smart Tap),
  • To open a SSL/TLS secure communication channel with a server over a TCP/IP network, providing client-side authentication of the device.

This article shows how-to insert existing ECC private keys into the SpringCore’s ATECC.

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Using master cards to configure the SpringCore devices

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SpringCore is the umbrella name to the new generation of SpringCard devices (Puck, SpringPark, etc.) that share the same MCU platform and the same overall architecture. All the devices in this family could be configured easily and securely thanks to SpringCard 2nd generation of master cards.

A master card v2 is a Desfire EV1 (or later) contactless card, that contains the configuration parameters you want to apply to many devices. The data are protected by AES128 for authentication and secure communication, and their authenticity is validated by an ECC256 digital signature.

Thanks to this robust security scheme, only your devices can read and accept your master cards, while refusing (and being actually unable to read) master cards created by 3rd parties. Symmetrically, only the devices that you have commissioned with your own key-set are able to read your master cards, thus protecting your assets (secret keys and specific configuration parameters) against any unwanted disclosure, even if the master card is lost or stolen.

This article shows how-to create master cards v2 using springcoremastercard.exe tool and/or SpringCard Companion, and what are the best practices to use them efficiently and securely.

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Writing a configuration with springcoreconfig.exe

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SpringCore is the umbrella name to the new generation of SpringCard devices (Puck, SpringPark, etc.) that share the same MCU platform and the same overall architecture. springcoreconfig.exe, a software from the SpringCore Tools suite, is the command-line utility to manipulate device configurations. It is typically intended to upload a complete configuration at once, but is also able to edit registers one by one.

This article shows how springcoreconfig.exe works.

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