Paper 2005/315

A Scalable, Delegatable Pseudonym Protocol Enabling Ownership Transfer of RFID Tags

David Molnar, Andrea Soppera, and David Wagner

Abstract

The ability to link two different sightings of the same Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag enables invasions of privacy. The problem is aggravated when an item, and the tag attached to it, changes hands during the course of its lifetime. After such an ownership transfer, the new owner should be able to read the tag but the old owner should not. We address these issues through an RFID pseudonym protocol. Each time it is queried, the RFID tag emits a different pseudonym using a pseudo-random function. Without consent of a special Trusted Center that shares secrets with the tag, it is infeasible to map the pseudonym to the tag's real identity. We present a scheme for RFID pseudonyms that works with legacy, untrusted readers, requires only one message from tag to reader, and is scalable: decoding tag pseudonyms takes work logarithmic in the number of tags. Our scheme further allows for time-limited delegation, so that we can give an RFID reader the power to disambiguate a limited number of pseudonyms without further help from the Trusted Center. We show how RFID pseudonyms facilitate the transfer of ownership of RFID tags between mutually distrustful parties. Our scheme requires only limited cryptographic functionality from the tag: we need a pseudo-random function (PRF) and the ability to update tag state or to generate random numbers. Tag storage and communication requirements are modest: we give example parameters for a deployment of one million tags in which each tag stores only $128$ bits, makes $6$ PRF evaluations, and sends $158$ bits each time it is read.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Cryptographic protocols
Publication info
Published elsewhere. Abbreviated version in Selected Areas in Cryptography 2005. This is the long version
Keywords
RFID private authentication
Contact author(s)
dmolnar @ eecs berkeley edu
History
2005-09-12: received
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2005/315
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2005/315,
      author = {David Molnar and Andrea Soppera and David Wagner},
      title = {A Scalable, Delegatable Pseudonym Protocol Enabling Ownership Transfer of {RFID} Tags},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2005/315},
      year = {2005},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2005/315}
}
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