Breaking anonymity of some recent lightweight RFID authentication protocols

Abstract

Due to their impressive advantages, Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) systems are ubiquitously found in various novel applications. These applications are usually in need of quick and accurate authentication or identification. In many cases, it has been shown that if such systems are not properly designed, an adversary can cause security and privacy concerns for end-users. In order to deal with these concerns, impressive endeavors have been made which have resulted in various RFID authentications being proposed. In this study, we analyze three lightweight RFID authentication protocols proposed in Wireless Personal Communications (2014), Computers & Security (2015) and Wireless Networks (2016). We show that none of the studied protocols provides the desired security and privacy required by the end-users. We present various security and privacy attacks such as secret parameter reveal, impersonation, DoS, traceability, and forward traceability against the studied protocols. Our attacks are mounted in the Ouafi---Phan RFID formal privacy model which is a modified version of well-known Juels---Weis privacy model.