NFC Reader/Writer hardware and tag/sticker reliable supplier in Thailand required

[ukrules]

I'm writing some programs that use a cryptography library I've been testing and I'd like to store some private keys on NFC tags.

This is experimental programming that I'm doing for research purposes at this stage.

Right now I'm looking for a reliable supplier within Thailand who can sell me reader/writer hardware for use on Windows, Mac and Linux desktops from various popular manufacturers and a selection of the different NFC tags / stickers which are available. I would like to buy several computer connected reader/writers to ensure maximum compatibility with my library.

So, has anyone ordered the hardware and tags/labels/stickers of all kinds from a reliable supplier within Thailand, if so I'd appreciate your input.

I don't need any fancy software, just something that has a C API that I can use to read / write the data to and from the hardware, or even a protocol to communicate directly with the USB device.

I haven't used these before but I suspect it's going to be some kind of serial device communications over USB.

I have a hardware random number generator which works in a similar way.

Thanks for any help !

[jcisco]

Have you worked with Smart cards by any chance as NFC is an interesting choice for the task at hand.

Anyways, I have experience in trying to find said solution to your problem and I must recommend that you source your gear from a few of the Malaysian based companies

that deal with this tech.

I can go into detail the time i spent on this but I found much better solutions outside of the country.

[jcisco]

Also I will go on to add, that I hope the private keys you are storing aren't the root keys for a signing infrastructure. As cold storage on this media is not been researched significantly enough for storing bitcoins let alone what I was bringing up. By any chance you aren't working in the gaming industry?

[ukrules]

I'm just looking into them from a programming point of view at this stage and I've ordered a bunch of different tags and a couple of reader/writers from the UK which are en route to me now.

My plans for their eventual potential usage is in an email client which provides end to end encryption similar to PGP, but using ECC,ECDSA,ECDHE,AES primitives for key generation, signing, exchange and message encryption.

The keys on the NFC tags would either be the private keys used by the messaging system or a key to decrypt an encrypted file containing the keys used by the messaging system, I haven't decided at this stage. The encrypted keyfile if chosen could of course be backed up separately as well.

The reason I'm looking at NFC tags for this instead of smart cards is because the reader/writers are very cheap when compared to some of the smart card hardware I've come across (especially the writers) so anyone can easily and cheaply write their own newly created keys using a supported NFC device attached to their computer to an NFC 'keyfob' and make multiple copies of it if necessary.

Smart cards are the obvious choice but people are cheap...

I'm interested in the longevity of storage on these NFC devices but they won't be used for any important primary cold storage at all, it's more of a day to day thing that I'm thinking about. Something to make the software easier to use yet maintaining a measure of security.

[jcisco]

How did you go on finding a supplier ?? Also have youn considered ubi keys? I utilise them to fulfil large parts of what your investigating.

Edited December 1, 2014 by jcisco

[ukrules]

How did you go on finding a supplier ?? Also have youn considered ubi keys? I utilise them to fulfil large parts of what your investigating.

I took the easy option and mail ordered a few tester units and a bunch of tags/cards from Europe.

I'd consider the Yubikey if it can store an arbitary user generated key, the older Yubikey I already have doesn't do that but I believe the 'NEO' model might as it appears to function as a smart card.

[jcisco]

FYI http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/9/7359535/google-backed-password-killer-crosses-major-milestone