Identification between friend and foe (IFF) is a technique for recognising a platform, be it ship, aircraft or helicopter. It is widely used in both civil and military worlds. In the case of the former, aircraft coming in to land at airports are recognised, while various units/platforms are accessed for multiple applications in the case of the latter. The new technique being proposed here is based on the concept of public-key cryptography. Security rests in exploiting the difficulty of finding discrete logarithms over an elliptic curve (EC), where the elliptic curve itself is defined over a binary finite field. The proposed scheme has significant merits of using insecure channels, compact implementation and speed suitable for real-time applications without prejudice to confidentiality and integrity. A "challenge-response" type of protocol, typical of IFF, is being adhered to.
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