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Update (2014-10-19). The discussion of tokenization in this post is based on an interpretation of the EMV Tokenisation specification that I now think is not the intended one. See the white paper Interpreting the EMV Tokenisation Specification for an alternative interpretation.

Update (2014-10-05). See Mark's comment below, where he says that Apple Pay is already set up to use the EMV mode of the EMV Contactless Specification, in addition to the mag-stripe mode.

I've been trying to figure out how Apple Pay works and how secure it is. In an earlier post I assumed, based on the press release on Apple Pay, that Apple had invented a new method for making payments, which did not seem to provide non-repudiation. But a commenter pointed out that Apple Pay must be using standard EMV with tokenization, because it works with existing terminals as shown in a demonstration.

So I looked at the EMV Specifications, more specifically at Books 1-4 of the EMV 4.3 specification, the Common Payment Application Specification addendum, and the Payment Tokenisation Specification. Then I wrote a second blog post briefly describing tokenized EMV transactions. I conjectured that the dynamic security code mentioned in the Apple press release was an asymmetric signature on transaction data and other data, the signature being generated by customer's device and verified by the terminal as part of what is called CDA Offline Data Authentication. And I concluded that Apple Pay did provide non-repudiation after all.

But commenters corrected me again. Two commenters said that the dynamic security code is likely to be a CVC3 code, a.k.a. CVV3, and provided links to a paper and a blog post that explain how CVC3 is used. I had not seen any mention of CVC3 in the specifications because I had neglected to look at the EMV Contactless Specifications, which include a mag-stripe mode that does not appear in EMV 4.3 and makes use of CVC3. I suppose that, when EMVCo extended the EMV specifications to allow for contactless operation, it added the mag-stripe mode so that contactless cards could be used in the US without requiring major modification of the infrastructure for processing magnetic stripe transactions prevalent in the US.

The EMV contactless specifications

The EMV Contactless Specifications envision an architecture where the merchant has a POS (point-of-sale) set-up comprising a terminal and a reader, which may be separate devices, or may be integrated into a single device. When they are separate devices, the terminal may be equipped to accept traditional EMV contact cards, magnetic stripe cards, or both, while the reader has an NFC antenna through which it communicates with contactless cards, and software for interacting with the cards and the terminal.

The contactless specifications consist of Books A, B, C and D, where Book C specifies the behavior of the kernel, which is software in the reader that is responsible for most of the logical handling of payment transactions. (This kernel has nothing to do with an OS kernel.) Book C comes in seven different versions, books C-1 through C-7. According to Section 5.8.2 of Book A, the specification in book C-1 is followed by some JCB and Visa cards, specification C-2 is followed by MasterCards, C-3 by some Visa cards, C-4 by American Express cards, C-5 by JCB cards, C-6 by Discover cards, and C-7 by UnionPay cards. (Contactless MasterCards have been marketed under then name PayPass, contactless Visa cards under the name payWave, and contactless American Express cards under the name ExpressPay.) Surprisingly, the seven C book versions seem to have been written independently of each other and are very different. Their lengths vary widely, from the 34 pages of C-1 to the 546 pages of C-2.

Each of the seven C books specifies two modes of operation, an EMV mode and the mag-stripe mode that I mentioned above.

A goal of the contactless specifications is to minimize changes to existing payment infrastructures. A contactless EMV mode transaction is similar to a contact EMV transaction, and a contactless mag-stripe transaction is similar to a traditional magnetic card transaction. In both cases, while the functionality of the reader is new, those of the terminal and the issuing bank change minimally, and those of the acquiring bank and the payment network need not change at all.

The mag-stripe mode in MasterCards (book C-2)

I've looked in some detail at contactless MasterCard transactions, as specified in the C-2 book. C-2 is the only book in the contactless specifications that mentions CVC3. (The alternative acronym CVV3 is not mentioned anywhere.) I suppose other C books refer to the same concept by a different name, but I haven't checked.

C-2 makes a distinction between contactless transactions involving a card and contactless transactions involving a mobile phone, both in EMV mode and in mag-stripe mode. Section 3.8 specifies what I would call a "mobile phone profile" of the specification. The profile supports the ability of the mobile phone to authenticate the customer, e.g. by requiring entry of a PIN; it allows the mobile phone to report to the POS that the customer has been authenticated; and it allows for a different (presumably higher) contactless transaction amount limit to be configured for transactions where the phone has authenticated the customer.

Mobile phone mag-stripe mode transactions according to book C-2

The following is my understanding of how mag-stripe mode transactions work according to C-2 when a mobile phone is used.

When the customer taps the reader with the phone, a preliminary exchange of several messages takes place between the phone and the POS, before an authorization request is sent to the issuer. This is of course a major departure from a traditional magnetic stripe transaction, where data from the magnetic stripe is read by the POS but no other data is transferred back and forth between the card and the terminal.

(I'm not sure what happens according to the specification when the customer is required to authenticate with a PIN into the mobile phone for a mag-stripe mode transaction, since the mobile phone has to leave the NFC field while the customer enters the PIN. The specification talks about a second tap, but in a different context. Apple Pay uses authentication with a fingerprint instead of a PIN, and seems to require the customer to have the finger on the fingerprint sensor as the card is in the NFC field, which presumably allows biometric authentication to take place during the preliminary exchange of messages.)

One of the messages in the preliminary exchange is a GET PROCESSING OPTIONS command, sent by the POS to the mobile phone. This command is part of the EMV 4.3 specification and typically includes the transaction amount as a command argument (presumably because the requested processing options depend on the transaction amount). Thus the mobile phone learns the transaction amount before the transaction takes place.

The POS also sends the phone a COMPUTE CRYPTOGRAPHIC CHECKSUM command, which includes an unpredictable number, i.e. a random nonce, as an argument. The phone computes CVC3 from the unpredictable number, a transaction count kept by the phone, and a secret shared between the phone and the issuing bank. Thus the CVC3 is a symmetric signature on the unpredictable number and the transaction count, a signature that is verified by the issuer to authorize the transaction.

After the tap, the POS sends an authorization request that travels to the issuing bank via the acquiring bank and the payment network, just as in a traditional magnetic stripe transaction. The request carries track data, where the CVC1 code of the magnetic stripe is replaced with CVC3. The unpredictable number and the transaction count are added as discretionary track data fields, so that the issuer can verify that the CVC3 code is a signature on those data items. The POS ensures that the unpredictable number in the track data is the one that it sent to the phone. The issuer presumably keeps its own transaction count and checks that it agrees with the one in the track data before authorizing the transaction. Transaction approval travels back to the POS via the payment network and the acquiring bank. Clearing takes place at the end of the day as for a traditional magnetic stripe transaction.

Notice that transaction approval cannot be reported to the phone, since the phone may no longer be in the NFC field when the approval is received by the POS. As noted in the first comment on the second post, the demonstration shows that the phone logs the transaction and shows the amount to the customer afer the transaction takes place. Since the phone is not told the result of the transaction, the log entry must be based on the data sent by the POS to the phone in the preliminary exchange of messages, and a transaction decline will not be reflected in the blog.

Tokenized contactless transactions

Tokenization is not mentioned in the contactless specifications. It is described instead in the separate Payment Tokenisation specification. There should be no difference between tokenization in contact and contactless transactions. As I explained in the second post, a payment token and expiration date are used as aliases for the credit card number (known as the primary account number, or PAN) and expiration date. The customer's device, the POS, and the acquiring bank see the aliases, while the issuing bank sees the real PAN and expiration date. Translation is effected as needed by a token service provider upon request by the payment network (e.g. MasterCard or Visa). In the case of Apple Pay the role of token service provider is played by the payment network itself, according to a Bank Innovation blog post.

Implications for Apple Pay

Clearly, Apple Pay must following the EMV contactless specifications of books C-2, C-3 and C-4 for MasterCard, Visa and American Express transactions respectively. More specifically, it must be following what I called above the "mobile phone profile" of the contactless specifications. It must be implementing the contactless mag-stripe mode, since magnetic stripe infrastructure is still prevalent in the US. It may or may not be implementing contactless EMV mode today, but will probably implement it in the future as the infrastructure for supporting payments with contact cards is phased in over the next year in the US.

The Apple press release is too vague to know with certainty what the terms it uses refer to. The device account number is no doubt the payment token. In mag-stripe mode the dynamic security code is no doubt the CVC3 code, as suggested in the comments on the second post. In EMV mode, if implemented by Apple Pay, the dynamic security code could refer to the CDA signature as I conjectured in that post, but it could also refer to the ARQC cryptogram sent to the issuer in an authorization request. (I've seen that cryptogram referred to as a dynamic code elsewhere.) It is not clear what the "one-time unique number" refers to in either mode.

If Apple Pay is only implementing mag-stripe mode, one of the points I made in my first post regarding the use of symmetric instead of asymmetric signatures is valid after all. In mag-stripe mode, only a symmetric signature is made by the phone. In theory, that may allow the customer to repudiate a transaction, whereas an asymmetric signature could provide non-repudiation. On the other hand, two other points related the use of a symmetric signature that I made in the first post are not valid. A merchant is not able to use data obtained during the transaction to impersonate the customer. This is not because the merchant sees the payment token instead of the PAN, but because the merchant does not have the secret needed to compute the CVC3, which is only shared between the phone and the issuer. And an adversary who breaches the security of the issuer and obtains the shared secret is not able to impersonate the customer, assuming that the adversary does not know the payment token.

None of this alleviates the broader security weaknesses that I discussed in my third post on Apple Pay: the secrecy of the security design, the insecurity of Touch ID, the vulnerability of Apple Pay on Apple Watch to relay attacks, and the impossibility for merchants to verify the identity of the customer.

Remark: a security miscue in the EMV Payment Tokenisation specification

I said above that "an adversary who breaches the security of the issuer and obtains the shared secret is not able to impersonate the customer, assuming that the adversary does not know the payment token". The caveat reminds me that the tokenization specification suggests, as an option, forwarding the payment token, token expiry date, and token cryptogram to the issuer. The motivation is to allow the issuer to take them into account when deciding whether to authorize the transaction. However, this decreases security instead of increasing it. As I pointed out in the the second post when discussing tokenization, the issuer is not able to verify the token cryptogram because the phone signs the token cryptogram with a key that it shares with the token service provider, but not with the issuer; therefore the issuer should not trust token-related data. And forwarding the token-related data to the issuer may allow an adversary who breaches the confidentiality of the data kept by the issuer to obtain all the data needed to impersonate the customer, thus missing an opportunity to strengthen security by not storing all such data in the same place.

Update (2014-09-21). There is a small loose end above. If the customer loads the same card into several devices that run Apple Pay, there will be a separate transaction count for the card in each device where it has been loaded. Thus the issuer must maintain a separate transaction count for each instance of the card loaded into a device (plus another one for the physical card if it is a contactless card), to verify that its own count agrees with the count in the authorization request. Therefore the issuer must be told which card instance each authorization request is coming from. This could be done in one of two ways: (1) the card instance could be identified by a PAN Sequence Number, which is a data item otherwise used to distinguish multiple cards that have the same card number, and carried, I believe, in discretionary track data; or (2) each card instance could use a different payment token as an alias for the card number. Neither option fits perfectly with published info. Option (2) would require the token service provider to map the same card number to different payment tokens, based perhaps on the PAN sequence number; but the EMV Tokenization Specification does not mention the PAN sequence number. Option (1) would mean that the same payment token is used on different devices, which goes counter to the statement in the Apple Press release that there is a Device Unique Number; perhaps the combination of the payment token and the PAN sequence number could be viewed as the Device Unique Number. Option (2) provides more security, so I assume that's the one used in Apple Pay.

In an earlier post I raised concerns about the security of Apple Pay based on the scant information provided in Apple's press release. In a comment on that post, Brendon Wilson pointed out that Apple Pay must be using standard EMV with Tokenization rather than a new payment protocol, because it works with existing terminals. After looking in some detail at the EMV specifications, I tried to explain in my last post how Apple Pay could be implemented without departing from the specifications. As part of that explanation, I conjectured that an Apple Pay device may be using both a symmetric signature verified by the issuer and an asymmetric signature verified by the merchant's terminal. That would eliminate one of the security concerns in my original post. In his comment, Brendon also referred to a MacRumors blog post that provided new details on how Apple Pay is used with Apple Watch. In this post I'd like to recap my remaining concerns on the security of Apple Pay for in-store transactions. (I don't have enough information yet to discuss web transactions.)

Secrecy

The security design of Apple Pay is secret. This is a weakness in and of itself. Submitting security designs to public scrutiny has been a standard best practice for decades. Without public scrutiny, security flaws will not be caught by friendly researchers, but may be found by adversaries who have enough to gain from reverse-engineering the design and exploiting the flaws that they find.

Insecurity of Touch ID

When Apple Pay is used on the iPhone, the user has to authenticate to the phone for each transaction. This is a good thing, but authentication relies on Touch ID, which only provides security against casual attackers.

Shortly after the introduction of Touch ID, it was shown that it is possible to lift a fingerprint from the iPhone itself, use the fingerprint to make fake skin reproducing the fingerprint ridges, place the fake skin on a finger, and use the finger with the fake skin to authenticate with Touch ID. Three different techniques for making the fake skin were reported, two of them here, a third one here.

Relay attacks against Apple Pay on Apple Watch

Apple's press release touts the security provided by Touch ID, but adds that Apple Pay will also work with Apple Watch without explaining how the customer will authenticate to Apple Watch, which does not have a fingerprint sensor, and can be used with the iPhone 5 and 5c, which do not have fingerprint sensors either.

A MacRumors blog post explains that the user will authenticate with a PIN, and remain authenticated while the watch detects continuing skin contact using sensors on the back of the watch. The user has to reenter the PIN after contact is interrupted.

A PIN is more secure than Touch ID as long as either the watch or a chip within the watch provide sufficient tamper resistance to protect the hash of the PIN which may be used to verify the hash. (If an adversary who captures the watch is able to extract the hash, then he or she can easily crack the PIN by a brute-force offline attack.) But the scheme described by MacRumors is vulnerable to a relay attack.

A relay attack involves two attackers, a first attacker located near a merchant's contactless terminal, and a second attacker located near an unwitting customer, whom we shall refer to as the victim. The first attacker has an NFC device that interacts with the terminal, and the second attacker has an NFC device that interacts with the victim's contactless card or mobile device, masquerading as a terminal. The attackers' devices communicate with each other using a fast link, relaying data between the terminal and the victim's device. The first attacker can thus make a purchase and have it charged to the victim's card or device. The attack does not work if a customer has to authenticate by performing some action such as entering a PIN or touching a sensor, but it works if all a customer needs to do is put his or her device within NFC reach of the terminal, as is the case for Apple Pay on Apple Watch.

A relay attack was demonstrated by Gerhard Hancke in 2005, who claimed it was an easy attack against ISO 14443A cards and terminals. More recently, a different kind of relay attack was demonstrated by Michael Roland against Google Wallet. In Roland's attack, the second attacker was replaced with malware running on the victim's Android phone. Google countered the attack by restricting access from the main operating system of the phone to the NFC chip containing the payment credentials. (It would be interesting to check if Host Card Emulation happens to reenable the attack.) Google's countermeasure, however, only prevents the attacker-plus-malware attack, not the two-attacker attack.

Lack of customer ID verification

Tokenization means that merchants will not be able to verify the identity of their customers. This is good for customer privacy, but leaves merchants defenseless against criminals who steal phones and defeat Touch ID, and against relay attacks on Apple Watch. Millions of smart phones are stolen every year in the US alone, and once Touch ID can be used for payments, criminal organizations will no doubt perfect the Touch ID hacking techniques originally developed by researchers.

Update (2014-10-19). The discussion of tokenization in this post is based on an interpretation of the EMV Tokenisation specification that I now think is not the intended one. See the white paper Interpreting the EMV Tokenisation Specification for an alternative interpretation.

Update (2014/09/24). Apple Pay must be using the EMV contactless specifications, which are a substantial departure from the EMV 4.3 specifications. PLEASE SEE THIS MORE RECENT POST.

After reading Apple's press release on Apple Pay, I naively believed that Apple had invented a new protocol for credit and debit card payments. In my previous post I speculated on how Apple Pay might be using the device account number, one-time unique number and dynamic security code mentioned in the press release. But in a comment, Brendon Wilson pointed out that Apple Pay must be using standard EMV with Tokenization, since it uses existing contactless terminals, as shown in a demonstration that he sent a link to. I agree, and after spending some time looking at the EMV specifications, I believe that the device account number, one-time unique number and dynamic security code of the press release are fanciful names for standard data items in the specifications.

I've seen a Bank Innovation blog post that tries to explain how Apple Pay works in terms of EMV and Tokenization. But that post is inconsistent, saying sometimes that the terminal generates a transaction-specific cryptogram, and other times that the cryptogram is already stored in the iPhone when the consumer walks up to a checkout counter.

One way of explaining how EMV-plus-Tokenization works is to consider the evolution from magnetic strip cards to cards with EMV chips and then tokenization.

Magnetic strip transactions

In a magnetic strip transaction, the terminal reads the credit or debit card number (a.k.a. as the Primary Account Number, or PAN) and the expiration date from the card and assembles a transaction authorization request that contains the card number and expiration data in addition to other data, including the transaction amount. The terminal sends the request to the acquiring bank, which forwards it to the issuing bank through a payment network such as VISA or MasterCard. If appropriate, the issuer returns an approval code, which reaches the merchant via the payment network and the acquiring bank.

At the end of the day, the merchant sends a batch of approval codes to the acquiring bank for clearing. The acquiring bank forwards each approval code to the appropriate issuing bank via the payment network and credits the merchant account after the issuing bank accepts the charge and the transaction amount is received by the acquiring bank from the issuing bank.

EMV transactions

When an EMV chip is used instead of a magnetic strip, the transaction process changes as follows. The terminal sends transaction data including the transaction amount to the chip in the card, which returns a response indicating whether the transaction is to be rejected, accepted offline, or processed online by submitting it to the issuer for approval.

(In the context of EMV, an "online transaction" is an in-store transaction that is approved by the issuing bank reached over some network. To avoid confusion, I will use the term "web transaction" or "web payment" to refer to a transaction where the user enters credit card data into a web form.)

The chip's response includes a cryptogram. Confusingly, the term cryptogram has two different meanings in the EMV specifications. Formally, a cryptogram is a symmetric signature, which takes the form of a message authentication code (MAC) calculated with a key shared between the chip and the issuing bank. (Strictly speaking, each MAC is computed with a different key derived from a permanent shared key and a transaction counter.) But informally, the term cryptogram is also used to refer to a message containing the MAC, such as the response from the chip to the terminal, and a cryptogram is said to be of a particular type, indicated by an acronym such as AAC, TC, ARQC or ARPC, determined by a Cryptogram Information Data byte included in the message.

To indicate that the transaction is to be accepted offline, the chip sends the terminal a Transaction Certificate (TC) cryptogram, while to indicate that an authorization request is to be sent to the issuer, the chip sends the terminal an Authorization Request Cryptogram (ARQC). In both cases the MAC is computed on data that includes the transaction amount and other transaction data as well as terminal and application data. However, the card number and expiration date are not included in the MAC computation.

If it receives an ARQC cryptogram, the terminal sends an authorization request including the cryptogram (i.e. the MAC) to the acquiring bank, which forwards it to the issuing bank via the payment network. The issuer responds with a message that follows the same route back to the merchant and includes an Authorization Response Cryptogram (ARPC), signed with the same key as the ARQC cryptogram. The terminal forwards the ARPC cryptogram to the chip, which sends back a TC cryptogram.

Whether the transaction is authorized offline or online, the merchant includes the TC cryptogram received from the chip in the funding request that it sends to the acquiring bank at clearing time. The TC plays the role played by the approval code in magnetic strip processing. It is forwarded by the acquiring bank to the issuer via the payment network.

Tokenized transactions

Tokenization replaces the credit or debit card number and expiration date with numeric codes of same length, called a payment token and a token expiry date respectively. Separate ranges of numeric codes are allocated so that no payment token can be confused with a card number. A Token Service Provider maintains the mapping between card numbers coupled with their expiration dates and payment tokens coupled with their expiration dates.

Reliance on the token service provider means that tokenization can only be used for online transactions. [Update. As explained in Shaun's comment, there is no reason why offline transactions cannot use tokenization.] Only the issuer and the payment network see the true card number and expiration date. The acquiring bank, the merchant and the user's device (which may be a card with a chip, or a mobile device) only see the payment token and expiration date. Back-and-forth translation between card data and token data is effected by the token service provider upon request by the payment network. Translation does not invalidate cryptograms, because cryptograms do not include the card number and expiration date.

At transaction time, the authorization request with the ARQC cryptogram includes token data as it travels from the user's device to the merchant's terminal, the acquiring bank, and the payment network. The payment network sends a "de-tokenization" request to the token service provider. The token service provider returns the card data, which the payment network adds to the request before forwarding it to the issuer bank. The response from the issuer bank, which carries the ARPC cryptogram, includes card data but no token data. The response goes first to the payment network, which replaces the card data with token data obtained from the token service provider, before sending the response along to the acquiring bank, the merchant, and the user's device.

At clearing time, the merchant sends token data along with the TC cryptogram to the acquiring bank, which forwards them to the payment network. The payment network asks the token service provider to de-tokenize the data, then forwards the card data and the TC cryptogram to the issuing bank.

The tokenization spec allows the role of token service provider to be played by the issuing bank, the payment network, or a party that plays no other role in transaction processing. According to the Bank Innovation post, it is the payment network that plays the token service provider role in Apple Pay.

The tokenization spec mentions a token cryptogram. This cryptogram is different from the others, and does not replace any of the others. Its purpose is to help the token service provider decide whether it is OK to respond to a de-tokenization request and reveal card data. It is computed with a symmetric key derived from data shared between the user's device and the token service provider. It is sent along with a transaction authorization request from the user's device to the merchant's terminal, the acquiring bank and the payment network, which includes it in the de-tokenization request to the token service provider.

According to the EMV specs, the token cryptogram may also be forwarded by the payment network to the issuer, which can take it into account when deciding whether to authorize the transaction. However, the issuer cannot verify the authenticity of the token cryptogram, since it is signed with a key that the issuer does not have.

Offline data authentication

Now I need to go back to the pre-tokenization EMV specs and describe the concept of offline data authentication, which refers to the direct authentication by the terminal of data sent by the card, as part of an offline or online transaction. The EMV specifications require cards that can perform offline transactions to support offline data authentication, while such support is optional for cards that only perform online transactions. Offline data authentication takes place when both the card and the terminal support it.

Offline data authentication comes in three flavors, called SDA, DDA, and CDA.

In Static Data Authentication (SDA), the card provides the terminal with an asymmetric signature on static card data. The signature is computed once and for all by the issuer when the card is issued and stored in the card. The issuer has an RSA key pair. The private key is used to compute the signature, and the public key is included in a certificate issued by a certificate authority (CA) to the card-issuing bank . The issuer's certificate is also stored in the card and sent to the terminal along with the signature. (The issuer's private key is not stored in the card, of course.) The terminal uses the public key in the certificate to verify the signature, and the public key of the CA, which it is configured with, to verify the CA's signature in the issuer's certificate. Notice that the card does not have a key pair.

In Dynamic Data Authentication (DDA), the card has its own key pair, which is stored in the card when the card is issued. (Cryptographic best practice calls for a key pair to be generated within the cryptographic module where it will be used, but card firmware may not have key-pair generation functionality.) The card provides the terminal with an asymmetric signature computed with the card's private key on data including a transaction-specific random challenge sent by the terminal. The card sends the signature to the terminal together with a certificate for the card's public key signed by the issuer and backed by the issuer's certificate, which the card also sends to the terminal.

In Combined DDA / Application Cryptogram Generation (CDA), the data signed by the card additionally includes the cryptogram that the card sends to the terminal.
[Update: The data that is signed also includes transaction data. Transaction data is thus signed twice, with a symmetric signature (the cryptogram) and an asymmetric signature. The CDA asymmetric signature provides non-repudiation, although non-repudiation is not discussed in the EMV specfications.]

Offline data authentication in a tokenized transaction

The tokenization spec does not mention offline data authentication. Recall that tokenized transactions are necessarily online transactions, and the EMV spec does not require cards that only perform online transactions to support offline data authentication.

However, nothing prevents the use of offline data authentication in a tokenized online transaction. In a non-tokenized transaction, the asymmetric signature in any of the three flavors of offline data authentication is computed on data that includes the card number and expiration date. In a tokenized transaction, it will be computed on data that includes instead the payment token and token expiry date.

Explaining the Apple press release terminology

Based on the above, the terms in the Apple press release can be understood as follows:

Device account number. The press release says:

When you add a credit or debit card with Apple Pay, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device nor on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element on your iPhone or Apple Watch.

Clearly, the device account number must be what the Tokenization spec calls the payment token.

One-time unique number. The press release also says:

Each transaction is authorized with a one-time unique number using your Device Account Number …

The one-time unique number must be the ARQC cryptogram that is sent to the issuer as part of an authorization request.

Dynamic security code. The press release goes on to say:

… and instead of using the security code from the back of your card, Apple Pay creates a dynamic security code to securely validate each transaction.

This is puzzling, since the card's security code is not used for in-store transactions, is not encoded in a magnetic strip, and is not stored in an EMV chip. It is only used for payments by phone or web payments. So nothing can be used instead of the security code for in-store transactions.

I conjecture that the term dynamic security code has been invented by an imaginative security-marketing guru to refer to an asymmetric CDA signature sent by the user's device to the merchant's terminal. We have seen above that CDA is not precluded by the EMV spec for online transaction. It would make sense for Apple Pay devices to provide CDA to merchant terminals, because that would increase security and could be useful to merchants. A merchant could use a CDA signature as evidence when contesting a chargeback, because an asymmetric signature provides non-repudiation. The signature would be on data including the payment token rather than the card number, but in a repudiation dispute the token service provider could supply the card number.

If Apple Pay devices implement CDA signatures, and if all terminals used with Apple Pay make use of them, then the concerns about the use of symmetric instead of asymmetric signatures that I raised in the previous post are eliminated. But other security concerns remain. In the next post I will restate those remaining concerns, taking into account new information in a MacRumors blog post on Apple Watch that was also referenced by Brendon Wilson in his comment. (Thank you, Brendon!)

Update (2014-9-15). As pointed out in the comments, it seems that Apple Pay is based on existing standards. In my next post I try to explain how it may follow the EMV specifications with Tokenization, and in the following one I update the security concerns taking into account additional information on Apple Watch.

Yesterday's Apple announcements shed light on a surprising contrast between the attitudes of the company towards product design on one hand, and towards security on the other. Tim Cook took pride not only on the design of the Apple Watch, but also on the process of designing it, the time and effort it took, the attention to detail, and the reliance on a broad range of disciplines ranging from metallurgy to astronomy. The contrast could not be sharper with the lack of attention paid to the security of Apple Pay.

I doubt if any cryptographers were consulted on the design of Apple Pay. If they were, they should have insisted on publishing the design so that it could benefit from the scrutiny of a broad range of security experts. Submission to public scrutiny has been recognized as a best practice in the design of cryptographic protocols for many decades.

The press release on Apple Pay mentions a Device Account Number, a one-time transaction authorization number, and a dynamic security code. Since the security design is secret, it is impossible to tell for sure how these numbers and codes are used. But since no mention is made of public key cryptography, I surmise that the Device Account Number is a shared secret between the device and the credit card issuing bank, and the dynamic security code is a symmetric signature on the transaction record. If so, by using a symmetric signature instead of an asymmetric one, Apple is 36 years behind the state of the art in cryptography. By contrast, asymmetric signatures are used routinely by smartcards for in-store payments in accordance with the EMV specifications. The same techniques could be adapted for in-store or online payments with credentials stored in a mobile device.

Symmetric signatures lack non-repudiation. And if the Device Account Number is used as a symmetric key, then it may be vulnerable to insider attacks and security breaches at the issuing bank, while a private key used for asymmetric signatures would only be stored in the user's device and would be immune to such vulnerabilities. Worse, for all we know, the Device Account Number may be made available to the merchant's terminal; the press release says nothing to the contrary. If so, it would be vulnerable to capture by point-of-sale malware, after which it could be used online to commit fraud just like a credit card number.

A surprising aspect of Apple Pay is its dependence on Touch ID, which only provides security against casual attackers. But wait, does Apple Pay security really depend on Touch ID? Although this is not mentioned in the Apple Pay press release, it was stated at the Apple event in Cupertino that payments can be made using an Apple Watch, which itself can be used in conjunction with an iPhone 5 or 5C. Neither the Apple Watch, nor the iPhones 5 and 5C have Touch ID sensors; and use of the Touch ID sensor in an iPhone 5S, 6 or 6+ may not be required when the terminal is tapped by an Apple Watch used in conjunction with those phones. So it seems that Apple Pay does not really require user authentication.

The press release says that, "when you're using Apple Pay … cashiers will no longer see your name, credit card number or security code, helping to reduce the potential for fraud". This may reduce the potential for fraud against the customer, but certainly not for fraud against the merchant. And while customers have little if any liability to fraud, at least in the US, merchants are fully liable. Without knowing the customer's name, merchants cannot verify the customer's identity and are defenseless against a thief who steals an Apple Watch and its companion iPhone and goes shopping online, or in stores without having to show an ID.

But while Apple Pay puts merchants at risk of financial loss, it puts users at an even greater risk. I don't like to dramatize, but I don't know how else to say this. People have been killed by smart phone thieves. Somebody wearing an Apple Watch will be parading a valuable watch, and advertising that a valuable smart phone is being carried along with the watch. Furthermore, a thief who steals the watch and the phone can then go on a shopping spree. The press release says that "if your iPhone is lost or stolen, you can use Find My iPhone to quickly suspend payments from that device"; but this will be a powerful incentive for the thief to kill the victim. If Apple does not find some other way of discouraging theft, wearers of Apple watches will be putting their lives at risk.
Update. I got carried away and didn't think it through. It's unlikely that a murderer will risk using the victim's phone and watch for purchases. Even though the merchant does not know the identity of the owner of the mobile device, a forensic investigation will no doubt be able to link the murder to the shopping and may allow the murderer to be identified by surveillance cameras.