TTP-mtOTP: Trusted Third Party, Ownership Transfer Protocol for Multiple RFID Tags

Abstract

RFID-tagged items can change owners at different points, for example, when a retail item is purchased or as part of a supply chain. Ownership transfer (OT) is to give the new owner a level of privileged access to the RFID tag by establishing secrets shared by new owner and tag, replacing the access and secrets of the old owner. Some OT protocols employ a trusted third party (TTP) as intermediary between old and new owners to protect the privacy of each from the other. In this paper, we present an OT protocol, TTP-mtOTP, to transfer multiple tags from an old owner to a new owner, using a TTP. In the protocol, the TTP provides information for a tag that belongs to the old owner to be able to recognize that a transfer is authorized and to authenticate the new owner. We establish the old and new owner privacy as well as the resistance of TTP-mtOTP against multiple security attacks. We compare privacy, security, computation, and communication properties of TTP-mtOTP against those of other OT protocols for multiple tags that use a TTP.