Electronic entity with a means for communication by contact and remotely

DESCRIPTION

ELECTRONIC ENTITY WITH CONTACT AND REMOTE COMMUNICATION MEDIA

The invention relates to an electronic entity with contact media and remote media, more precisely to a process of personalizing such electronic entity.

An electronic entity, such as an integrated circuit card that generally includes electronic circuits capable of storing information, has means for communicating with the outside to exchange information stored by the electronic entity such as reader or terminal devices.

with

Commonly used means of communication include contact media, for which physical contact between the electronic entity and the terminal is a necessary condition for establishing communication, and remote means by of which communication is possible between the electronic entity and a reader without physical contact between these two elements, with a range of a few centimeters in general.

On the other hand, some electronic entities group together media of the two types mentioned above, in which case the contact and non-contact modes of operation may be organized according to the necessary features of the apparatus for each of the modes of communication, as for example. described in US 5,204,495 and US 5,999,713.

If the use of non-contact media is known for its practicality (since no exact positioning of the electronic entity is required for the exchange of information), however, it has the drawback of a risk of untimely information exchange, for example. for example by establishing unwanted communication by the user when passing near a reader. This problem is particularly sensitive when the electronic entity holds confidential information, such as an electronic passport.

It has been sought, therefore, in the state of the art to take measures to prevent this untimely exchange of data, sometimes referred to in the anti-skimming Anglo-Saxon word.

In this regard, it has been proposed in patent application WO 99/16019 to have a switch on the upper face of an integrated circuit card to make it possible to receive data on that card only after activation of the switch. The addition of such a switch in the electronics entity, however, poses problems of performance and reliability (e.g. in the case of repeated bending of the electronics entity as defined by ISO7816) and increases its cost of manufacture.

This is probably the reason why it has been proposed in US 6,424,029 to use a capacitive type switch best suited for the general constitution of information-carrying electronic entities, in particular for integrated circuit cards. If this solution reduces the difficulties just mentioned, you cannot completely avoid them.

In addition, the solutions just remembered lack flexibility and do not especially allow for limiting access to contactless communication mode, for example by password.

DE 199 08 285 describes the loading of personalization data on an integrated circuit card through the card contacts.

Patent application WO 98/37526 describes a multiple application card in which personalization data stored on the card is consulted to determine if an application can be loaded thereon.

In this context, a process according to claim 1 is described below.

The possibility of exchanging data by remote communication means can thus be generated through contact connection, for example by means of a terminal.

The data exchange referred to by the authorization is for example at least some data being sent and / or at least some data being received.

The electronic entity also comprises means for storing activation information controlled by said instruction and means for authorizing the exchange (emission and / or reception) of said data via remote communication means in the presence of said activation information.

This can separate the reception of the instruction and the exchange (for example the emission) of the data, for example in the temporal plane.

The electronic entity may also further comprise means for inhibiting the exchange of said data via remote communication media in the absence of said activation information.

The electronic entity is for example an integrated circuit card in accordance with ISO14443 and / or ISO7816.

This process is practical to implement and has the advantages already mentioned in terms of separation of authorization and exchange.

According to a possible embodiment, there may be a step of inhibiting the exchange of said data at a given time.

at a given time may correspond to receiving an end-of-communication control by the remote media, which allows the instruction to authorize only one communication.

The given time can be determined by a delay, which allows the duration of the authorization to be limited in time.

The specified time can be reached by receiving a predetermined number of checks via the remote media, which limits the possibilities for using the authorization.

The given time may correspond to the completion of a communication initialization step.

This is for example a safe instruction.

This process may further comprise a step of writing configuration information representative of the activation information modification conditions. The electronic entity can thus be configured with regard to the possibilities of using the remote media at the time of personalization for later use without involving modifications to the circuits used.

Other features and advantages of the invention will appear in light of the following description made with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:

Figure 1 is an example of an electronic entity according to the teachings of the invention;

Figure 2 represents a possible example of the physical constitution of the electronic entity of Figure 1;

Figure 3 is a flow chart depicting a first part of the operation of the electronic entity of Figure 1;

Figure 4 is a flow chart illustrating a second part of the operation of the electronic entity of Figure 1.

Figure 1 represents the main elements of an electronic entity: this electronic entity comprises a microcircuit 12 (for example a microprocessor) that may be connected to an external terminal type device by means of contacts 14 to establish contact-like communication between the electronic entity and that terminal.

The electronic entity also comprises an antenna 16 connected at each end thereof to a corresponding terminal of the microcircuit 12.

Antenna 16 is part of the electronic entity's remote communication means.

A rewritable memory 18 (for example an electronically programmable erasable memory type non-volatile memory, commonly referred to as the Anglo-Saxon acronym EEPROM) is also connected to microcircuit 12.

It is to be noted that in this embodiment, the microcircuit 12 may be powered via the contact connection (via at least one of the contacts 14) or, independently of that first power supply, by a power supply using the magnetic antenna. 16. The use of contactless communication mode will therefore not be constrained by the simultaneous use of the contact connection (via contacts 14).

The electronics may therefore be powered either by the contact connection or the power supply, which leads to two main modes of operation described respectively in figures 3 and 4; Simultaneous feeding through contact power and the power supply is naturally possible without compromising the operating principles of the two modes described above.

At the time of communication of the electronic entity with a terminal via contacts 14, the process illustrated in figure 3 is implemented under the control of microcircuit 12 (for example programmed by instructions stored in memory).

First, at the time of an initialization step of the data stored in the electronic entity, namely the personalization step used in the manufacture of integrated circuit cards prior to their placing on the market, an activation bit stored for example in memory is set to 0. rewritable 18, which allows to indicate that, as a rule, remote communication is inhibited (as will be described in more detail below).

At the time of the customization step, provision may also be made for writing configuration information as indicated (for example in the form of file access rights where the activation bit is stored) as to the use of the entity's remote media. may be authorized via contact link, for example:

- at any time, for example by leaving the file open which contains the activation bit (the electronic entity control program may, however, in this case condition the issuance of a secret code as described below);

- upon authentication of the reader (or cardholder which possibly enters a code for the reader), which is a variant of the embodiment described below for authorizing the use of remote media only to authenticated users;

- never, for example, by prohibiting access to the file that contains the activation bit, gue makes it impossible to modify it to eventually allow the use of contactless media.

The next question is whether access to the activation bit is free from the electronic entity control program.

At a particular point in contact mode operation (where the microcircuit 12 is powered by the terminal and exchanges data with it via the contacts 14), the microcircuit may receive a contactless communication activation instruction from the terminal, i.e. more generally information) which is intended to control the authorization of non-contact operation via antenna 16, as explained with reference to Figure 4 (step E20).

In the example described here, a user-provided encoder (for example by means of a keyboard) on the terminal is transmitted in association with the activation instruction so that authorization of contactless operation is only effective in the presence of the good code provided. by the user, this is a predetermined code and stored (possibly protected) in the rewritable memory 18 associated with microcircuit 12 (or in another memory, of the dead memory type associated with this microcircuit 12).

After receiving the activation instruction accompanied by the user supplied code, the microcircuit 12 proceeds to a step E22 of verifying the accuracy of the supplied code, that is, in practice comparing the supplied code with the code stored in the electronic entity as already mentioned. .

If the code provided corresponds well with the secret code stored in the electronic entity, the authorization of a contactless communication becomes effective by setting 1 in step E24 of the activation bit previously mentioned, which means that the electronic entity has actually received an information. activation of contactless communication.

On the contrary, if the user-supplied code is transmitted to the electronic entity with the activation instruction for step E20, it is not the code memorized by it, in step E26, the activation bit is set to 0 in the rewritable memory 18. means that it is considered then that no correct activation information has been received.

In both cases, the activation bit is for example modified by an UPDATE BINARY instruction (defined by ISO07816-4) after selecting the file which contains this activation bit by a SELECT control.

It may be noted that once the activation bit is set to 0 at the time of the initialization step, step E26 is not required as it does not a priori change the value of the activation bit. However, it may be desired to use it, for example to ensure that any use of an incorrect code leads to the activation bit being set to 0 even if the correct code has been subjected to a previous phase. On the other hand, in the presence or not of step E26, receiving an incorrect code could lead to other achievements, such as sending an error message from the card to the terminal via contacts 14.

In addition, although for the sake of brevity a single step of verifying code accuracy has been described without specifying whether it could be repeated or not, it can of course be considered to leave the user a limited number of input attempts. of the correct secret code, for example as a result of the electronic entity blogging when the limited number of attempts is exhausted and the code always wrong.

The contactless mode of operation will now be described with reference to figure 4. As indicated below, this mode of operation is triggered by the entry of the electronic entity within the reach of a remote reader, whether or not previously proceeded in the steps of figure 3 to enable contactless connection.

At the moment of the reader (step fed (the by the operating entity input of the electronic entity in the field of

E30), the electronic entity is a source which can be viewed as a detection of the electronic reader) and the microcircuit 12 starts its in noncontact mode.

At the beginning of this operation (preferably at the first steps of the program executed by microcircuit 13, for example at the time of implementation of the startup and anti-collision programs as defined in ISO14443-3), microcircuit 12 reads out. rewritable memory 18 of the activation bit (step E32).

Step E34 can then be checked for the activation bit value (which, as already indicated, is indicative of a contactless communication activation information).

If the activation bit is set to 0 (either because this value was entered at the time of initialization of the electronic entity and was not modified by receiving a correct activation instruction, or because this bit was reset to 0 after entering a code false or for prior data exchange allowed without further authorization being given), E36 ends with contactless communication, where only the first few steps will have been done this way without involving a data exchange.

On the contrary, if it has been found by microcircuit 12 that the activation bit stored in the rewritable memory 18 is of value 1 (ie if it is in the presence of an activation information), the implementation of contactless communication is sought, first know for a contactless connection protocol initialization in step E38 (for example according to ISO14443-4 to reach the level of Half-Duplex Block Transmission Protocol execution).

Once contactless communication is established (for example after step E38), the activation bit 18 is rewritable to rewritable memory 18 as represented by step E40 in figure 4. Implementation of step E40 after protocol initialization This ensures that the electronic entity will not be allowed to establish a new contactless communication after leaving the reader field (except to receive a new activation instruction via the contact link).

However, as already recalled, setting the activation bit to 0 (i.e. inhibiting the establishment of a new contactless communication) could interfere with other conditions, such as a delay in relation to the time the reception instruction is received. activation (or possibly in connection with establishing a contactless connection), executing a predetermined number of instructions by microcircuit 12 (or APDU Application Protocol Data Unit controls) or receiving an end-of-transaction message (as was the case in the first embodiment).

In another embodiment, the activation bit may not be considered to be reset to 0 at the time of operation in contactless mode, but rather to receive a deactivation instruction in contacts mode. Such a deactivation instruction could otherwise be provided even in the event that the activation bit is reset to 0 at the time of contactless operation (as for example described in figure 4).

In the example described, once the protocol has been initialized at step E38 and although the activation bit is reset to 0 at step 40, data is then exchanged according to the contactless protocol for a step E42. It should be noted, however, that when the data exchange of step E42 is terminated, for example by the electronic entity leaving the reader field, or alternatively upon receiving a control which terminates contactless communication, the activation bit having reset to 0 by step E40, a further iteration of steps E30 to E34 by returning the electronic entity in the reader field will lead to a failure of contactless communication by switching to step E36.

In the embodiment just described, the activation bit (used as an indication of the prior receipt of a correct activation instruction) conditions the set of data exchanges in contactless mode. Alternatively, it could be predicted that this activation bit only conditions the exchange of some particular data of the electronic entity, while other data could be freely communicated by the electronic entity when passing near a remote reader, even if no specific instruction was previously received by the contact call.

Thus, where the electronic entity is an electronic identification document, it may be foreseen that some data present in the document (such as the name of the referred person) will be communicated without first requiring the activation of a particular authorization, while issuing other data ( for example confidential information from biometric data types - fingerprints, iris or facial image) may only be issued by the electronic entity via the noncontact link provided that the electronic entity has previously received a valid activation instruction to that effect via the contact link.

In this case, the presence of an activation information (ie value 1 of the activation bit) will not condition the establishment of the contactless connection itself, but certain steps of issuing confidential data.

It can then be provided, for example, that the activation instruction only corresponds to the authorization to issue this data only once, meaning that the activation bit would be reset to 0 immediately after issuance of the confidential data.

According to a variant (which may possibly be combined with the embodiment just described), it may be anticipated that the activation information conditions the reception of data via the contactless connection. For example, an identification code may be prevented from being presented to the electronic unit by contactless contact by a malicious third party without the knowledge of the bearer authorized by the electronic entity, with the risk, for example, of blocking the electronic entity following submission. of several fake codes by this third person.

On the other hand, the data referred to by the exchange authorization is not necessarily limited to the application data of the electronic entity (ie especially the data provided by the electronic entity in its information carrier function), but may also include data of other types, such as as data that allow the establishment of a communication protocol.

The embodiments just given, with the considered variants, are only possible examples of implementation of the invention without limitations.