Bring Your Own Device For Authentication (BYOD4A) – The Xign–System

Abstract

The paper proposes an innovative authentication-system called Xign that is very easy to use, easily integrated in existing infrastructure, while offering strong multifactor-authentication for different domains of application, like web applications and physical access control. A QR code is all that is needed to provide an entry point of authentication to the user. The system comprises a smartphone application (Xign App), a server-component (Xign Authentication Manager) and a smartcard-applet (Xign SC). A NFC token contains a special smartcard-applet and a keypair which is protected through a user-selected PIN. To use this token for authentication, it must be paired with the users smartphone. To achieve that, the smartphone is also equipped with corresponding certificates. The Xign-system is backed by a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). As trust-anchor the PKI depends on the attributes of the new German identity card or similar identity verification systems, which are used to generate a derived identity, that is subsequently stored into token. As a consequence the Xign-System also takes steps to ensure anonymity of the user, while preventing tracing over multiple authentications.