> There are no share secrets as that does not scale to a 2 billion user > level (2008).
Yes. Which is why PKI is important to authenticate the reader as well as the card. Of if it's not used between the reader and the NFC device, the device has to ensure that data traveling THROUGH the reader is secure.
In 10 years of PKI deployment in the internet (backed by well over $1 billion investement from venture and DoD/NSA/GSA), there is NO evidence that in practice PKI scales to 2 billion. There is considerable evidence that 50% of those who have tried to go beyond 2000 users just gave up, frutstrated. You need to be very focussed to make PKI pay off, knowing what its good for, and what it is - in practice - really bad at.
There is evidence that 2 billion Internet users can all authenticate a server, or verify a signature on a windows update file. But the basis of this scaling is the reversible properties of RSA, not PKI. Without doubt this is a world-beating property, and made the internet growth possible. But its RSA, not PKI.
There is also evidence that the Lotus Notes approach to secure email, using RSA - the way that started this whole area off in the corporate/DoD market in 1979 - works as well as PKI, for 2000-20000 users, at a fraction of the risk and with considerably less complexity.
We have to rmemeber the RFIDs in our kids, pets, tickets and car license plates are all CONNECTED devices, not offline smartcards. They are all perfectly capable of doing end-end authentication exchanges with the secure Lotus-style database to learn asymmetric keys, and avoid certs.
There are not many applictions of pure, offline PKI-certs left - where there is no connectivity. Its a technology that is being outdated by the spead of telco and wireless.
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