Relay Attacks Research Articles

A context‐aware approach to defend against unauthorized reading and relay attacks in RFID systems

ABSTRACTRadio frequency identification (RFID) systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in both public and private domains. However, because of the inherent weaknesses of underlying wireless radio communications, RFID systems are plagued with a wide variety of security and privacy threats. A large number of these threats arise because of the tag's promiscuous response to any reader requests. This renders sensitive tag information easily subject to unauthorized reading. Promiscuous tag response also incites different forms of relay attacks whereby a malicious colluding pair, relaying messages between a tag and a reader, can successfully impersonate the tag without actually possessing it. Because of the increasing ubiquity of RFID devices, there is a pressing need for the development of security primitives and protocols to defeat unauthorized reading and relay attacks. However, currently deployed or proposed solutions often fail to satisfy the constraints and requirements of the underlying RFID applications in terms of (one or more of) efficiency, security, and usability. This paper proposes a novel research direction, one that utilizes sensing technologies, to tackle the problems of unauthorized reading and relay attacks with a goal of reconciling the requirements of efficiency, security, and usability. The premise of the proposed work is based on a current technological advancement that enables many RFID tags with low‐cost sensing capabilities. The on‐board tag sensors will be used to acquire useful contextual information about the tag's environment (or its owner, or the tag itself). For defense against unauthorized reading and relay attacks, such context information can be leveraged in two ways. First, contextual information can be used to design context‐aware selective unlocking mechanisms so that tags can selectively respond to reader interrogations and thus minimize the likelihood of unauthorized reading and “ghost‐and‐leech” relay attacks. Second, contextual information can be used as a basis for context‐aware secure transaction verification to defend against special types of relay attacks involving malicious readers. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

프라이버시를 제공하고 중계 공격에 안전한 다중-컨텍스트 RFID 상호 인증 프로토콜

최근 Selim등은 공개키 암호 기반의 프라이버시를 제공하기 위해 다중-컨텍스트 RFID 인증 프로토콜을 제안하였다. 하지만 Selim등이 제안한 프로토콜은 리더와 태그 간의 인증을 수행하는 과정에서 공개키 기반의 암호 알고리즘을 사용하므로 수동형 태그에는 적합하지 않을 뿐만 아니라 상호 인증 부재로 인한 위장 공격에 취약하다. 위와 같은 효율성 문제와 보안 취약점 해결을 위해 본 논문에서는 각각 다른 영역에서 단일 수동형 태그와 다양한 목적을 제공하는 리더들 간의 상호 인증을 제공함으로써 프라이버시 침해와 태그 위장 공격을 방지하며, 중계 공격과 서비스 거부 공격에 안전한 다중-컨텍스트 RFID 상호 인증 프로토콜을 제안한다. 결론적으로 제안한 프로토콜은 RFID 리더로부터 수집된 공간과 시간의 정보를 토대로 안전한 상호 인증이 수행되고, 수동형 태그에 적합하도록 안전한 일방향 해쉬 함수와 대칭키 암호 연산을 수행함으로써 강한 보안성과 높은 연산 효율성을 제공한다. Recently, Selim et al proposed public key cryptography based privacy preserving multi-context RFID authentication protocol. However Selim et al's proposed protocol not only doesn't fit into passive tag based RFID system because it uses public key based encryption algorithm to perform authentication between reader and tag, but also is insecure to an impersonation attack because it doesn't provide mutual authentication. In order to eliminate the above described efficiency problem and security vulnerabilities, this paper proposes a new multi-context RFID mutual authentication protocol that can prevent privacy invasion and tag impersonation attack through providing mutual authentication between single passive tag which is located different application space and readers which provide multi-context purposes and can secure against relay attack and denial-of-service attack. As a result, the proposed protocol performs secure mutual authentication based on the collected space and time information from the RFID reader and provides strong security and high computation efficiency because if performs secure one-way hash function and symmetric encryption operations suitable to the environments of passive RFID tags.

Providing a Distance Bounding Protocol Named Pasargad in order to Defend against Relay Attacks on RFID-Based Electronic Voting System

The most important characteristic of RFID-based electronic voting system compared to traditional voting system is that votes in the electronic system are as contactless smart cards in place of paper ballots. For casting ballots, voters use a computer terminal to write their choices (their chosen candidates) into contactless smart cards and then put the smart card inside the box. The most important threat for RFIDsystems is information robbery and relay attacks. In this article, by designing a protocol called Distance Bounding Protocol it is tried to defend these systems against relay attacks.

Lightweight RFID authentication with forward and backward security

We propose a lightweight RFID authentication protocol that supports forward and backward security. The only cryptographic mechanism that this protocol uses is a pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) that is shared with the backend Server. Authentication is achieved by exchanging a few numbers (3 or 5) drawn from the PRNG. The lookup time is constant, and the protocol can be easily adapted to prevent online man-in-the-middle relay attacks. Security is proven in the UC security framework.

Distance Bounding Protocol for Mutual Authentication

A distance bounding protocol enables one party to determine a practical upper bound on the distance to another party. It is an effective countermeasure against mafia fraud attacks (a.k.a. relay attacks) which do not alter messages between users but only relay messages. The main idea of distance bounding protocols is to repeat fast bit exchanges. One party sends a challenge bit and another party answers with a response bit and vice versa. By measuring the round-trip time between the challenge and the response, an upper bound on the distance between users can be calculated. If messages are relayed, the round-trip time increases and thus mafia fraud attacks can be detected. We introduce an efficient distance bounding protocol for mutual authentication. It enjoys a reduced false acceptance rate under mafia fraud attacks and does not require an extra confirmation message after the fast bit exchange phase.

Distance Bounding with IEEE 802.15.4a: Attacks and Countermeasures

Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband, in particular the recent standard IEEE 802.15.4a, is a primary candidate for implementing distance bounding protocols, thanks to its ability to perform accurate indoor ranging. Distance bounding protocols allow two wireless devices to securely estimate the distance between themselves, with the guarantee that the estimate is an upper-bound on the actual distance. These protocols serve as building blocks in security-sensitive applications such as tracking, physical access control, or localization. We investigate the resilience of IEEE 802.15.4a to physical-communication-layer attacks that decrease the distance measured by distance bounding protocols, thus violating their security. We consider two attack types: malicious prover (internal) and distance-decreasing relay (external). We show that if the honest devices use energy-detection receivers (popular due to their low cost and complexity), then an adversary can perform highly effective internal and external attacks, decreasing the distance by hundreds of meters. However, by using more sophisticated rake receivers, or by implementing small modifications to IEEE 802.15.4a and employing energy-detection receivers with a simple countermeasure, honest devices can reduce the effectiveness of external distance-decreasing relay attacks to the order of 10m. The same is true for malicious prover attacks, provided that an additional modification to IEEE 802.15.4a is implemented.

경량 RFID 경계 결정 프로토콜

최근 근접 인증에 사용되는 비접촉식 스마트카드와 같은 RFID 태그들이 경계 위조(distance fraud) 공격, 마피아 위조(mafia fraud) 공격, 테러리스트 위조(terrorist fraud) 공격과 같은 다양한 위치 기반 공격인 중계 공격(relay attack)들에 매우 취약함이 증명되었다. 더 나아가 이러한 중계 공격들을 방지하기 위해 리더와 태그사이의 메시지 송수신 왕복 시간을 측정하는 경계 결정(distance-bounding) 프로토콜이 한 해결책으로 연구되고 있다. 2005년에 Hancke과 Kuhn은 처음으로 해쉬 함수 기반의 RFID 경계 결정 프로토콜을 제안하였다. 하지만 Hancke-Kuhn 프로토콜은 공격자에게 n번의 왕복에서 (3/4)<TEX>$^n$</TEX>의 성공 확률을 제공하여 중계 공격을 완벽히 방어할 수 없다. 본 논문에서는 공격자에게 n번의 왕복에서 (5/8)<TEX>$^n$</TEX>의 성공 확률을 제공하는 새로운 경량 RFID 경계 결정 프로토콜을 제안한다. 연구 결론으로 제안한 프로토콜은 안전한 해쉬 함수와 XOR 연산을 기반으로 하여 높은 저장 공간 효율성을 제공할 뿐만 아니라, 공격자의 성공 확률을 (5/8)<TEX>$^n$</TEX>으로 최적화하여 중계 공격에 대해서도 더욱 더 안전하다. Recently, it is proved that contactless smart-card based RFID tags, which is used for proximity authentication, are vulnerable to relay attacks with various location-based attacks such as distance fraud, mafia fraud and terrorist fraud attacks. Moreover, distance bounding protocols have been researched to prevent these relay attacks that can measure the message transmitted round-trip time between the reader and the tag. In 2005, Hancke and Kuhn first proposed an RFID distance bounding protocol based on secure hash function. However, the Hancke-Kuhn protocol cannot completely prevent the relay attacks because an adversary has (3/4)<TEX>$^n$</TEX> attack success probability. Thus, this paper proposes a new distance-bounding protocol for light-weight RFID systems that can reduce to (5/8)<TEX>$^n$</TEX> for the adversary's attack success probability. As a result, the proposed protocol not only can provide high-space efficient based on a secure hash function and XOR operation, but also can provide strong security against the relay attacks because the adversary's attack success probability is optimized to (5/8)<TEX>$^n$</TEX>.

Design of a secure distance-bounding channel for RFID

Distance bounding is often proposed as a countermeasure to relay attacks and distance fraud in RFID proximity identification systems. Although several distance-bounding protocols have been proposed the security of these proposals are dependent on the underlying communication channel. Conventional communication channels have been shown to be inappropriate for implementing distance bounding, as these channels introduce latency that can be exploited to obscure attempted attacks. Distance-bounding channels for RFID tokens have been proposed but have failed to address distance fraud or have not been practically implemented in an RFID environment. This paper describes a near-field, bit-exchange channel design that minimizes latency and allows for more secure distance-bounding measurements, while still allowing for a resource-constrained prover. Results from a proof-of-concept implementation is also presented, which illustrates that a channel that is resistant to both relay attacks and distance fraud is feasible in current RFID systems.

Reid et al.'s distance bounding protocol and mafia fraud attacks over noisy channels

Distance bounding protocols are an effective countermeasure against relay attacks including distance fraud, mafia fraud and terrorist fraud attacks. Reid et al. proposed the first symmetric key distance bounding protocol against mafia and terrorist fraud attacks. However, claims that this is only achieved with a (7/8)n probability of success for mafia fraud, rather than the theoretical value of (3/4)n (for n rounds) achieved by distance bounding protocols without a final signature. We prove that the mafia fraud attack success using the Reid et al. protocol is bounded by (3/4)n and reduces as noise increases. The proof can be of further interest as it is the first - to the best of our knowledge - detailed analysis of the effects of communication errors on the security of a distance bounding protocol.

Attacks on a distance bounding protocol

Singelée and Preneel have recently proposed a enhancement of Hancke and Kuhn’s distance bounding protocol for RFID. The authors claim that their protocol offers substantial reductions in the number of rounds, though preserving its advantages: suitable to be employed in noisy wireless environments, and requiring so few resources to run that it can be implemented on a low-cost device. Subsequently, the same authors have also proposed it as an efficient key establishment protocol in wireless personal area networks. Nevertheless, in this paper we show effective relay attacks on this protocol, which dramatically increase the success probability of an adversary. As a result, the effectiveness of Singelée and Preneel’s protocol is seriously questioned.

Enhanced low‐cost RFID protocol to detect relay attacks

AbstractContactless smart cards are more and more used in access control and payment systems. However, most of such cards are vulnerable to relay attacks, also known as mafia fraud attacks. This attack requires simpler technical resources than tampering or cryptanalysis. In this the adversary deceives, the verifier into thinking that a genuine prover is close by relaying the messages between both genuine parties. The main countermeasure against this attack is the use of so‐called distance bounding protocols. In the radio frequency identification (RFID) framework, Hancke and Kuhn proposed the first distance bounding protocol, which resorts to an expensive and complex ultra wide band (UWB) radio link. Reid et al. remove this extra radio link and propose a low‐cost protocol, but some aspects still need to be further investigated. In this paper, we propose an enhanced low‐cost protocol which takes advantage of the special characteristics of the inductive communication in RFID, and the use of ‘void‐challenges’ to protect against relay attacks. The processing delay of this protocol is zero and it can be directly implemented on RFID devices, without resorting to any extra resources. We present experimental results to support our arguments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Distance bounding protocols for RFID enhanced by using void-challenges and analysis in noisy channels

RFID systems are vulnerable to different attacks related to the location; distance fraud attack, relay attack and terrorist attack. The main countermeasure against these attacks is the use of proto...

Public key cryptography based privacy preserving multi-context RFID infrastructure

In this paper, we propose a novel radio frequency identification (RFID) infrastructure enabling multi-purpose RFID tags realized by the use of privacy preserving public key cryptography (PKC) architecture. The infrastructure ensures that the access rights of the tags are preserved based on the spatial and temporal information collected from the RFID readers. We demonstrate that the proposed scheme is secure with respect to cryptanalytic, impersonation, tracking, replay, and relay attacks. We also analyze the feasibility of PKC implementation on passive class 2 RFID tags, and show that the requirements for PKC are comparable to those of other cryptographic implementations based on symmetric ciphers. Our numerical results indicate PKC based systems can outperform symmetric cipher based systems, since the back end servers can identify RFID tags with PKC based systems approximately 57 times faster than the best symmetric cipher based systems.

Distance bounding protocols for RFID enhanced by using void‐challenges and analysis in noisy channels

AbstractRFID systems are vulnerable to different attacks related to the location; distance fraud attack, relay attack and terrorist attack. The main countermeasure against these attacks is the use of protocols capable of measuring the round trip time of single challenge‐response bit. In this paper, we consider a modification of these protocols applying a new feature; the ‘void challenges’. This way, the success probability for an adversary to access to the system decreases. We use as reference‐point the most popular of this kind of protocols, the Hancke and Kuhn's protocol, to show the improvements achieved when different cases are analysed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Distance-Bounding Based Defense Against Relay Attacks in Wireless Networks

In this paper, a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof scheme is proposed for secure identification in wireless networks, and it uses a timed oblivious transfer technique to enable a single verifier to identify multiple provers. The verifier and the prover do not need to be synchronized in this scheme. This scheme also enjoys the distance-bounding property which makes the proposed scheme invulnerable to the relay attack. We propose to use the order statistic for the detection of relay attackers. We show that it is optimal in terms of minimum variance. Finally, we shed some light on implementation issues of our proposed scheme.