Device authentication ICs

16 March 2011 DSP, Micros & Memory

NXP Semiconductors announced the au10tic family of secure ICs designed specifically for device authentication. The au10tic secure microcontrollers are based on NXP’s proven security technology, which has been widely used for securing government ID cards and passports, as well as smartcards for banking and other high-security applications.

Offering easy integration into end devices, the au10tic ICs provide a complete tamper-resistant security solution including key generation and programming services, as well as the option for remote management of applications and credentials running on the secure MCU. The devices can be used for counterfeit protection; for authentication of devices and users accessing secure content and services; and for device identification to enable secure machine-to-machine communication.

Using state-of-the-art public key infrastructure (PKI) algorithms, such as RSA and ECC, the first device in the au10tic family – the A7001 – enables key management schemes where the secret key never leaves the security IC and is not part of the host software and also supports symmetric algorithms such as 3DES and AES. In addition, the IC has built-in hardware tamper resistance to protect the secret key from physical attacks.

The A7001 runs the JavaOS, along with an industry standard X.509 certificate-based security application for integration into end devices. For design engineers, the JavaOS also allows rapid application development and customisation. The solution features a standard I2C interface enabling integration into virtually all electronic devices, as well as 80 KB EEPROM for secure storage.

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