Investigating the use of the South African National Identification Card for electronic transaction processing

Abstract

Electronic transactions have long been a common occurrence, and since they deal with such a sensitive subject as finance, their security is of the utmost importance. The security of electronic transactions have greatly improved with the introduction of the EMV standard and its chip and PIN cards, but these new cards have brought with them new security flaws, and in some cases carrying over the flaws of their predecessor magnetic stripe cards, thereby making it possible to create magnetic stripe clones of chip and PIN cards. In addition, it is also possible to defraud individuals with the use of attacks such as the relay [10] and pre-play attacks [12] which make use of the vulnerabilities introduced by chip and PIN. This paper will propose a more secure alternative to current payment cards in the form of the South African National ID Card (NID). In addition to describing the technologies behind the NID and EMV, a proposed prototype will be put forward that will be able to evaluate the eligibility of the NID for use in electronic transactions.