Project Duration:
February 2014 – March 2014
Offices often use access badges for granting entrance. These smart cards communicate over Near Field Communication (NFC) to authenticate at the door. Most Android smartphones nowadays (since Android 4.4) are able to emulate these smart cards. At the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW, I developed a demonstrator on how to replace these access badges with an app.
Setup
The setup consisted of a web app managing the access rights and issuing the access tokens. On the other end an offline Raspberry Pi, equipped with an NFC reader and some LEDs to display the door access, emulated a door reader. The Android app stored the access token on the device and could hence authenticate badges even when offline. The project later evolved into the following paper: Secure Physical Access with NFC-enabled Smartphones.
Awards
The project was the final project of my computer science apprenticeship and was nominated for the 2014 ICT Young Professional Award, placing it among the top 10 projects in Switzerland.