Bundesdruckerei sees future of German eID card in mobile apps

 The 2012 SmartCard Award by the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) went  to Dr Walter Fumy, Chief Scientist at Bundesdruckerei. 

Bundesdruckerei is firmly convinced that the role of a TSM could also be an interesting option for smart metering gateways. This is a topic that was also addressed by this year’s winner of the SmartCard prize.

Dr Walter Fumy, whose work was highly praised in the laudatory speech by Dr Gisela Meister, herself a winner of the 2004 SmartCard Award, expressed his profuse thanks for the honour bestowed upon him.

“I am extremely happy to receive this award,” said Walter Fumy who has been working as Chief Scientist at Bundesdruckerei since 2009. “It shows that we are on the right track and that we will be able to continue setting trends in Secure ID.” Dr Fumy, co-editor of the “Handbook of eID Security” published last year, has for many years chaired the ISO/IEC Committee SC 27 (IT Security Techniques) and is head of the Security Management workgroup at the IT industry association BITKOM (Bundesverband Informationswirtschaft, Telekommunikation und neue Medien e.V.). The title of his paper at this year’s SmartCard Workshop is “Smart eID Security Technologies”.

Bundesdruckerei sees future of German eID card in mobile apps

For more than a year now, German citizens have been able to use the online functions of their new ID cards to securely confirm their identity online; however, this is restricted to stationary use, i.e. from a PC with a reading device. But Frank Dietrich, who had an important role to play in setting up Bundesdruckerei’s own eID Service, showed that this does not have to stay that way.

“Since the importance of the mobile Internet is growing, the eID functionalities of the new German ID card must also be available to mobile applications. To achieve this, we have to enable secure deriving of document-based ID attributes and their linking to a reliable “secure element“. The SIM card in a mobile phone, for instance, can be used to generate and store private key material,” explains Mr Dietrich. In order to meet with the high security requirements for protecting private data, an Anonymous Credential System is used where issuing and using ID are strictly separated. “Our approach foresees a specially authorised body, the so-called Trusted Service Manager (TSM), who, in its capacity as a neutral broker and administrator, is the only body that can install this proof -of-ID application on a secure element. This is similar to existing payment applications in the electronic wallet, such as a credit-card application. In this case, the TSM, just like Bundesdruckerei’s eID Service, acts as a trustworthy broker between the different service providers,” Mr Dietrich describes the Bundesdruckerei solution. The secure deriving and administration of ID information on a secure element in a trustworthy application enables use in a mobile setting. In order then to ensure that the user of a mobile terminal device is in fact who he or she claims to be, the personal information is protected by possession of the secure element and knowledge of the PIN.

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