Secure and private search protocols for RFID systems

Abstract

In many real world applications, there is a need to search for RFID tagged items. In this paper, we propose a set of protocols for secure and private search for tags based on their identities or certain criteria they must satisfy. When RFID enabled systems become pervasive in our life, tag search becomes crucial. Surprisingly, the problem of RFID search has not been widely addressed in the literature. We analyzed the privacy and security features of the proposed tag search protocols, and concluded that our protocols provide tag identity privacy, tag source location privacy, and tag-reader communication privacy. For the first time, we propose a formal method to securely search RFID tags which satisfy certain search criteria.