CIE Components in Electronics
NXP Semiconductors has announced that its SmartMX2 secure microcontroller has been awarded the world’s first Common Criteria EAL6+ certification for a secure microcontroller with a contactless interface based on 90-nm technology. Issued by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the EAL6+ security evaluation adds rigorous mathematical testing of the entire security architecture to resistance against various invasive, semi-invasive and non-invasive attacks.
The formal mathematical methods implemented leading to the new SmartMX2 security architecture and the corresponding CC EAL6+ certificate will provide a significantly higher level of trust for customers.
The SmartMX family of secure microcontrollers has leveraged the company’s IntegralSecurity architecture that combines more than 100 different security features including NXP’s SecureFetch protection against laser attacks. It provides security for a wide range of applications such as eGovernment, banking, mobile transactions, public transport, access management and device authentication and NXP has shipped more than one billion SmartMX chips to its customers including 86 out of 102 countries with ePassport projects.
“ID applications, devices and infrastructures to authenticate identities and secure transactions are becoming more prevalent and smarter, which is why the demand for hardware-based security is increasing. Financial institutions and governments in particular require tamper-resistant high-security microcontrollers that provide the best possible security and contactless performance. The CC EAL6+ certificate shows our customers that they can rely on NXP to continuously invest and improve in security, providing customers with trusted solutions for their smart life applications,” said Steve Owen, senior vice president of global sales, Identification business, NXP Semiconductors.
Among the highlights of NXP’s SmartMX2 technology are: IntegralSecurity architecture with more than 100 security features for attack protection; a high-performance SmartMX2 CPU with enhanced 8- to 32-bit application instruction set; power-efficient, high-speed crypto coprocessors for RSA/ECC and DES/AES and an optimised ISO/IEC 14443 interface including support for small antenna dimensions.
