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The MATTHEW consortium met on July 12^th, 2016 at the premises of IMA in Prague (Czech Republic) for a one day technical and general assembly meeting. The aim of the technical meeting was a final alignment between the partners for the upcoming last months of the project, whereas the general assembly meeting targeted tasks related to the project internal management.

The technical meeting started off with a recapitulation of the past three project months. Within these three months the MATTHEW team submitted eight deliverables to the European Commission. During the discussions it was pointed out several times that the efficient internal review process is an important factor to keep the deliverables’ quality as high as possible. Afterwards IAIK presented their new publication that deals with Blind Signatures in the Standard Model, which fits very well to the MATTHEW context. The technical meeting was closed with an intense discussion about the remaining technical deliverables that have to be submitted until the project end. Therefore, responsibilities as well as deadlines for the contributions were defined.

During the general assembly meeting the project coordinator informed the project team about the upcoming reporting duties as well as the non-technical deliverables that will be submitted by the end of October 2016.

When summarizing the technical and general assembly meeting it can be said that is was a very important meeting in order to ensure successful last project months with respect to technical as well as administrative work.

In the middle of May the MATTHEW consortium met for the second time in 2016 at the premises of Gemalto in La Ciotat, France. One of the first discussion points was the timely submission of three deliverables due by the end of April 2016 and the therefore successfully reached Milestone MS4.

The next agenda point was the upcoming submission of five deliverables by the end of June 2016. Therefore, the WP2 leader (IAIK) presented a novel protocol for the third use case that is based on Attribute-Based Cryptography (ABC), which will be the main content of D2.2. Furthermore, all WP5 partners discussed the upcoming reports on the implementation of the MATTHEW prototypes. These reports are also due by the end of June 2016.

The second day started with a recap of the discussed points from Day 1 and fixing a roadmap for the June 2016 deliverables in order to ensure timely as well as high quality submissions. The remaining time was dedicated to management issues such as risk management.

When summarizing the technical meeting it can be stated that the topics discussed and the decisions taken, are crucial for achieving a highly efficient and fruitful remaining project time.

Within the MATTHEW project IMA is working on the next generation access control platform.  This platform features an NFC enabled card reader that is equipped with a CIPURSE™ SAM (Secure Access Module). The SAM provides the necessary cryptographic function, which is needed for the protocol execution. Instead of using conventional key cards IMA’s platform utilizes NFC enabled smart phones. The credentials are securely stored on the mobile’s SIM card. As soon as the NFC reader receives the credentials from the phone, they are forwarded to the access control terminal that verifies them and decides if access is granted or not. More information about the IMA framework that also represents the second use case within the MATTHEW project can be found in D1.1 in Chapter 2.2.

The figure above depicts the reader, the access control terminal as well as two smart phones. A clear advantage of this system is that no additional smart cards are needed, but only an NFC enabled smart phone, which has to be tapped to the reader. If additional security mechanisms are needed for the access control the IMA solution offers two possibilities:

1. The user has to enter a PIN, which is attached to the credentials before they are transmitted to the reader.

2. The reader can request the approval of another person that also has to tap the phone to the reader in order to grant access.

During the second review meeting IMA presented a first prototype of their system to the European Commission.

This week the MATTHEW consortium met for the first time in 2016 to discuss technical issues,  at the premises of AMS in Unterpremstätten, Austria. The meeting was split into two days, whereas the first day was focusing on work performed since the last technical meeting. Therefore, each partner presented an update of their ongoing work as well as an outlook of the work plans for the upcoming weeks and months. As during the next months, a number of deliverables are due, the consortium fixed a roadmap in order to ensure the quality as well as a timely submission of the documents.

The second day was dedicated to technical discussions, which took place in a workshop-like atmosphere. These discussions focused on the integration and demonstration of the three MATTHEW use cases:

• Advanced Mobile Banking Application
• Advanced Access Control Application
• Advanced Ticketing Application

The workshop participants informed afterwards the entire consortium about the discussed topics and how they will tackle upcoming challenges.

After two days of fruitful discussions it can be said that the meeting was a success as all agenda points could be addressed and the roadmap for the last months of the MATTHEW project was fixed.

With the end of October, the 2nd project year of MATTHEW comes to its end. In the second year of MATTHEW we were concerned about four major technical developments:

● system security by utilizing ABCs, PUFs and multiple SEs
● antenna design and the corresponding hardware integration
● integration of a first nanoSIM prototype
● application development for the different use cases.

Besides these technical tracks, the MATTHEW consortium focused also on standardization as well as dissemination activities. As you see, we covered lots of challenging topics, had intensive technical discussions during several meetings and telephone conferences and in this way, we managed to make a big step towards the planned innovational outcome. The following points summarize the work of our successful 2nd project year:

☑ made excellent progress towards technical objectives
☑ released 3 source code libraries
☑ successfully submitted 5 Deliverables
☑ represented MATTHEW at well-known occasions like 8th RFID Symposium, CSP Innovation Forum, ISO14443 Task     Force Meetings
☑ published 6 high-quality scientific papers
☑ became part of the EU Yearbook
☑ made our project website more lively including a project blog as well as social media

We are now looking forward to present our project achievements of year 2 to the European Commission and provide you soon with our public Deliverables on the website. For now, find out more about MATTHEW outcomes within the published papers and source code libraries here.

This week the MATTHEW consortium met at Gemalto’s premises in Meudon, France for a general assembly as well as a technical meeting. The meeting was split into two days where the first day was focusing on updates from the single work packages as well as an alignment between the partners for the upcoming tasks and deliverables. Furthermore, IAIK announced during the meeting the release of their new library for pairing-based protocols.

The second day was totally dedicated to the upcoming second review meeting, which will take place on November 26^th 2015 in Brussels.

After two days of intense and long discussions it can be said that the meeting was a total success as all agenda points were met.