Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2006/015

A Family of Dunces: Trivial RFID Identification and Authentication Protocols

Gene Tsudik

Abstract: Security and privacy in RFID systems is an important and active research area. A number of challenges arise due to the extremely limited computational, storage and communication abilities of a typical RFID tag. This paper describes a step-by-step construction of a family of simple protocols for inexpensive untraceable identification and authentication of RFID tags. This work is aimed primarily at RFID tags that are capable of performing a small number of inexpensive conventional (as opposed to public key) cryptographic operations. It also represents the first result geared for so-called {\em batch mode} of RFID scanning whereby the identification (and/or authentication) of tags is delayed. Proposed protocols involve minimal interaction between a tag and a reader and place very low computational burden on the tag. Notably, they also impose low computational load on back-end servers.

Category / Keywords: cryptographic protocols / RFID privacy, device authentication

Publication Info: Early (short) version appeared in PerCom'06 (WiP session). Full version appeared in PET'07.

Date: received 13 Jan 2006, last revised 28 Sep 2007

Contact author: gts at ics uci edu

Available format(s): Postscript (PS) | Compressed Postscript (PS.GZ) | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20070928:100923 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2006/015

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