POS Device Driver Trust Evaluation for Payment Security
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Solution Overview
Problem
Portable devices such as smartphones and tablets, used for contactless payments, pose vulnerabilities in protecting sensitive credit card information due to less control over software applications compared to dedicated hardware readers, making them susceptible to unauthorized access and fraud.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a device driver that runs as a privileged component of the operating system kernel to encrypt payment instrument information using a public key from a payment processing system, combined with a security policy that evaluates the trustworthiness of the device and prevents unauthorized transactions, ensuring protection even when offline.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If portable devices with embedded readers are used for contactless payments, then ease of operation is improved, but reliability deteriorates due to less control over software applications
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the payment processing functionality into separate components: a privileged device driver that handles sensitive operations and unprivileged applications that provide user interface and convenience features. This segmentation allows portable devices to maintain ease of operation while improving reliability by isolating critical functions in a trusted environment.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a privileged device driver as an intermediary layer between unprivileged payment applications and the embedded reader hardware. This mediator enforces security policies, controls access to sensitive operations, and ensures that applications cannot directly access unencrypted card information, thus resolving the contradiction between operational ease and system reliability.
2Adaptability or versatility
If unprivileged applications are allowed to access reader functionality, then adaptability is improved, but security deteriorates due to potential unauthorized access
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements dynamic security policies that are evaluated in real-time before allowing applications to perform sensitive operations. The privileged device driver can adaptively grant or deny access based on current trust conditions, allowing legitimate applications to function while blocking potentially harmful ones, thus balancing adaptability with security.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent incorporates a feedback mechanism where the privileged device driver continuously monitors application behavior and evaluates security policies. Based on this feedback, the system can prevent unauthorized access to sensitive operations while still allowing legitimate payment processing, thereby maintaining security without completely restricting application adaptability.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If encryption is implemented at the driver level, then security is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges encryption functionality directly into the privileged device driver, combining security operations with the existing reader access control infrastructure. This integration approach improves security by ensuring encryption is always applied while avoiding the need for separate encryption modules, thus limiting the increase in device complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The privileged device driver automatically performs encryption operations without requiring separate user actions or complex configuration. The security mechanism serves itself by inherently protecting sensitive data as it passes through the driver, improving security while keeping the user interface and application logic relatively simple.
Data Source
AI summary
A point-of-sale (POS) application is installed on a computing device of a merchant to process purchase transactions in conjunction with a network-accessible payment processing system. Software is also installed on the computing device to evaluate trustworthiness of the device and to prevent the device from performing sensitive operations such as purchase transactions when the device is deemed to be untrustworthy. The software obtains a security policy from the payment processing system and locally stores the security policy. The security policy specifies trust criteria and enforcement instructions, which can be updated from time to time when the payment processing system is accessible. The software evaluates device trustworthiness by gathering information regarding device conditions and comparing the information to the trust criteria. If the trust criteria are not satisfied, sensitive operations are disabled.