A Japanese electronics firm says it has developed a way to protect the information on smart cards so that they cannot be stolen off the radio signals that leak from card readers. Hitachi Ltd. says the technique was developed with the German university Technische Universitaet Darmstadt.
Hitachi’s system uses RSA encryption that makes it difficult to decipher data if the signal is captured.
Hitachi says it will push for the new technology to be made a global standard and expects protected smart cards to be on the market within three years.
