UnionPay pushes TEE technology to ensure mobile payment security

With the popularity of smartphones in China, mobile payments running through mobile phones have also developed rapidly, but security problems have always existed.
Deloitte's "2015 China Mobile Consumer Behavior" shows that China's smartphone ownership rate is as high as 86%, and the frequency of use is "extremely addictive", but nearly 40% of respondents said they have never used mobile phones to pay in stores, most of them think it is safe. Performance is not fully guaranteed.
In this regard, UnionPay began researching Trusted Executive Environment (TEE) intelligent terminal security solutions in 2012 to deal with security issues under Android, and actively promoted TEE - the technology behind Apple's fingerprint payment Industrialization.
"Now whether it is Apple or Android, the amount of code is very large, and the security of mobile operating systems is getting bigger and bigger. It is difficult to protect the current tens of millions of lines of code through traditional mobile phone operating system hardening and anti-virus software. The security of the operating system," Sun Quan, senior director of the UnionPay Electronic Payments Research Institute, said that UnionPay's TEE mainly provides a small and secure operating system in addition to the existing multimedia operating system, providing a secure environment for fingerprint protection, payment services and other security related. operating.
Li Dingzhou, a member of UnionPay TEE team, said that users often use payment methods such as UnionPay payment when they make mobile payment, and they need to enter passwords or fingerprints for verification. However, since the underlying Android system is not secure, these operations may be possible. Monitored by malware, even the user account information will be sent to the hacker background through the network, causing user loss. If the TEE system is adopted, the payment will be switched to the security system and passed through the hardware-protected out-of-order password keyboard or fingerprint. The security verification is completed, so even if the Android system has malware monitoring, it cannot know the password that the user enters under the security system.
At present, the QR code scanning payment in mobile payment is quite popular under the marketing of related businesses. "Scan code payment has to enter a password, and due to the insecurity of Android and other systems, the operation may be stolen, and may even copy your account and cause your account to be stolen." UnionPay seems to be only from the hardware. Strengthening the dual system of mobile phones will have a more chance to become a unified security solution in the era of mobile payment, so as to better solve the insecure problem of Android system.
"TEE is a trend, Apple fingerprint payment has begun to involve dual system switching," Li Dingzhou said. In October 2013, Apple released the Iphone 5S model, which supports biometrics and added security hardware modules to secure mobile phones for the first time in its operating system IOS7.
Li Dingzhou explained that when the user performs fingerprint payment, the fingerprint is actually obtained from the trusted execution environment TEE for information comparison, and the TEE guarantee makes the virus unable to affect the user's payment security. "At present, Apple mainly uses TEE's trusted storage. For the protection, there is no visual page operation yet, and UnionPay has gone ahead in this one."
UnionPay seems that with the development of applications, there will be more security scenarios in the future that will use TEE, and the application of such technologies will become more and more popular. In addition to UnionPay, GP organizations (Global Paltform), Oracle (Oracle), Intel (Intel) and some domestic manufacturers have also begun to layout TEE.
It is reported that UnionPay started TEE in 2009 and officially launched research in 2012. In September 2014, it officially introduced to domestic and international intelligent terminal security industry related parties - financial institutions, mobile operators, system software service providers, Internet organizations, testing and certification institutions, mobile phone manufacturers and chip manufacturers - This program. At that time, UnionPay said that the technology is at the international advanced level, and the core technology is self-controllable, attracting many well-known domestic and foreign manufacturers including ARM, Intel, Qualcomm, Huawei, Spreadtrum, Datang Semiconductor, Samsung, ZTE, Neusoft, and so on. Cooperation. Chai Hongfeng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and executive vice president of China UnionPay, said at the time that UnionPay TEE technology had begun to be industrialized.
At present, UnionPay is cooperating with Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and other vendors. It has also launched a N3TEE mobile phone that supports TA cross-platform deployment. It will further cooperate with related application vendors, including mobile phone manufacturers and fingerprint manufacturers, to carry out TEE fingerprint authentication and financial services. And other applications.
Compared with Apple's leading application of TEE to launch fingerprint payment and become a hit, Android system --- ecological fragmentation, numerous manufacturers in various links --- launching a unified standard fingerprint payment is no small challenge. Apple's Apple Pay partnership --- UnionPay cardholders can soon add their UnionPay cards to the iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, allowing mobile devices to pay like bank cards. UnionPay hopes to promote the standardization of fingerprint payment under Android. In June 2015, UnionPay officially released the “China UnionPay Trusted Execution Environment Integration (TEEI) Technical Specification”.