Fortune cookies and smartphones: Weakly unrelayable channels to counter relay attacks

Abstract

Smartphones are being increasingly used to perform financial transactions (through m-banking, virtual wallet or as a smartcard). The latter applications involve contactless technology (e.g., NFC) that is known to be vulnerable to mafia fraud attacks. In this work we show that a secret message inside an appropriately folded piece of paper (fortune cookie) can be used to effectively mitigate the mafia fraud attack. Fortune cookies implement a weakly unrelayable channel that, in combination with smartphones, provides a provable protection against those attacks. Our solution requires minimal or no hardware changes to the existing equipment (especially on the user's side) and is suitable for different communication technologies (e.g., intra-body communication, NFC, WiFi, Bluetooth, sound, infrared).