Abstract

The number of applications that use radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has grown continually in the last few years. Current RFID tags are mainly used for identification purposes and do not include crypto functionality. Therefore, classical RFID tags are not designed as secure devices and do not contain countermeasures against side-channel analysis (SCA). The lack of such countermeasures makes RFID tags vulnerable to attacks relying on electromagnetic (EM) analysis. When attaching crypto functionality to future RFID tags which is considered for many use cases like forgery protection of goods, SCA becomes a concern. In this work we show the susceptibility of UHF RFID tags to EM analysis by using differential-EM analysis attacks. We have examined commercially-available passive UHF RFID tags with a microchip. The results show that a simple dipole antenna and a digitalstorage oscilloscope connected to a computer are enough to determine data-dependent emanation of the microchip of passive UHF RFID tags at distances up to 1 m. Enhancement of RFID tags with crypto functionality therefore requires re-design of the whole tag architecture with respect to SCA.

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.