NXP comes with new microcontroller for Mifare smart cards

NXP Semiconductors has announced the Mifare Plus. According to the manufacturer, the renewed microcontroller is equipped with improved encryption mechanisms compared to its illustrious predecessor.

The announcement of the new microcontroller comes at a time when the current Mifare Classic chip is once again under fire due to the publication of open source cracking software. The Mifare Plus used according to NXP to store the key 128-bit AES encryption, but the key can also be written with the 48-bit Crypto1 encryption of the Mifare Classic for compatibility with existing card reading equipment.

The microcontroller’s ‘safe’ aes mode can be activated afterwards via a signal from the card reader. NXP further states that when switching to the aes encryption mode of the Mifare Plus, it can also be checked whether the chip has been tampered with in the vulnerable ‘classic mode’. The Mifare Plus chip could also be rewritten if it turns out that it has been tampered with. This means that the smart card can still be reused in safe mode, according to the chip manufacturer.

With the Mifare Classic emulation mode, NXP seems to want to keep its existing users by allowing them to gradually migrate to the improved encryption method. NXP plans to deliver the first samples of the renewed rfid chip next month. The Mifare Plus should appear on the market in the course of 2009.