Tag-reader Mutual Authentication Research Articles

A Systematic TRMA Protocol for Yielding Secure Environment for Authentication and Privacy Aspects

RFID is a system that uses the radio waves to scrutinize and capture data pertained to a tag for an object attached to it. In spite of RFID's wide application in industries, it poses a severe security issue. There is high susceptibility that RFID might be attacked with future attacks to invade the privacy and data in the system. To protect the RFID system against such attacks, the Pad-generation (Pad-Gen) function is used. This paper presents a mutual authentication scheme Tag Reader Mutual Authentication (TRMA) that is implemented using two approaches, the XOR operation and the MOD operation by modifying the Pad-Gen function. The proposed framework is executed on low-cost Artix7 FPGA XC7A100T-3CSG324, and its hardware verification is done on chip scope pro tool.

Implementation of $2^{n}\,- \,2^{k}\,- \,1$ Modulo Adder Based RFID Mutual Authentication Protocol

In wireless communication, secure transmission and reception of data are the major concern today. In recent years, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has played a vital role in the security system for secured data communication. The main challenge in RFID-based security system is to design a more secure, better area and power efficient encoder architecture for tag-reader mutual authentication protocol. This paper proposes new and efficient encoder architecture for RFID mutual authentication protocol which utilizes $2^{n}\,- \,2^{k}\,- \,1$ modulo adder for achieving higher security. The proposed architecture is described in Verilog hardware description language and the functionalities are verified and synthesized using Altera Quartus II tool. The architecture is also synthesized using Cadence RTL compiler for 180 and 90 nm technology. Experimental results of the proposed scheme give better performances in terms of area, power, and delay when compared with existing mutual authentication schemes. In addition to that, the architecture is realized as hardware in Altera DE2 Cyclone II (EP2C35F672C6) field programmable gate array and real time verification has been carried out using Logic Analyzer 16851A. Finally, formal security analysis has been performed using the Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic to show that the proposed protocol is secure.

An Approach towards Efficient and Secure RFID Mutual Authentication Protocol

The widespread distribution of RFID technologies may generate new threats to user privacy and security. The International Standards Organization (ISO) has incorporated the Electronic Product Code Class-1 Generation-2 (EPC C1G2) ultrahigh frequency (UHF) standard into its ISO/IEC 18000-6 as type C on UHF RFID for item management, and contributes using only very basic security tools using pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) and cyclic redundancy code (CRC). An authentication scheme was originally included as part of the EPC C1G2 industrial standard to secure RFID transactions. However, the EPC C1G2 specifications do not fully support privacy incursion and data security issues. The weakness can be alleviated by including a RFID tag-reader mutual authentication scheme. Here, a simple, cost-effective, light-weight RFID tag-reader mutual authentication scheme is proposed. Most importantly the proposed scheme does not demand the implementation of any cryptographic hash functions / keys with the tag and a center server / database, which in turn requires synchronization for security of key/hash values. The scheme utilizes only XOR operation, and tag‘s access password for achieving tag-reader mutual authentication. A specially designed pad generation (PadGen) function is employed to enhance security. The function PadGen is used to develop a cover-coding pad to mask the transponder‘s access password before data is transmitted. Therefore, in this proposed scheme, data between the tag and the reader is never exposed even to the stockholder‘s reader, and yet accomplish tag-reader mutual authentication. The proposed scheme based on XOR operation to generate PadGen function is an improvement over the weak one-way reader-to-tag authentication scheme proposed by the ISO 18000-6C protocol.

Efficient Implementation of RFID Mutual Authentication Protocol

Researchers have shown that the Electronic Product Code (EPC) Class-1 Generation-2 (C1G2) specification has serious security problems. To overcome these weaknesses, some authors have proposed a specially designed pad generation (PadGen) function to improve security. The PadGen function is used to produce a cover-coding pad to mask the tag's access password before the data are transmitted. In this paper, we study the radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag-reader mutual authentication (TRMA) scheme. Two improved authentication protocols for generating the PadGen function are described. A hardware design of these RFID authentication protocols conforming to the International Standards Organization 18000-6 Type-C protocol, also known as EPC C1G2 RFID protocol, is proposed. Since tags have an extremely limited computing power and storage capacity, the PadGen function based on exclusive-or operation for low-cost hardware implementation is reported in this study. The proposed RFID TRMA protocol was simulated using Modelsim XE II and synthesized using Altera's Quartus II software. The functionality of these strengthening protocols was successfully verified in hardware using an Altera DE2 board that included an Altera Cyclone II field-programmable gate array.

Hardware Implementation of RFID Mutual Authentication Protocol

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a wireless technology that utilizes radio communication to identify objects with a unique electrical identity. The widespread deployment of RFID technologies may generate new threats to security and user privacy. One of the main drawbacks of RFID technology is the weak authentication systems between a reader and a tag. In general, ¿weak¿ authentication systems that either leak the password directly over the network or leak sufficient information while performing authentication allow intruders to deduce or guess the password. In this paper, we study the RFID tag-reader mutual authentication scheme. A hardware implementation of the mutual authentication protocol for the RFID system is proposed. The proposed system was simulated using Modelsim XE II and synthesized using Xilinx synthesis technology. The system has been successfully implemented in hardware using an Altera DE2 board that included an Altera Cyclone II field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Finally, the output waveforms from the FPGA were displayed on the 16702A logic analysis system for real-time verification.

Lightweight Props on the Weak Security of EPC Class-1 Generation-2 Standard

In 2006 EPCglobal and the International Organization for Standards (ISO) ratified the EPC Class-1 Generation-2 (Gen-2) [1] and the ISO 18000-6C standards [2], respectively. These efforts represented major advancements in the direction of universal standardization for low-cost RFID tags. However, a cause for concern is that security issues do not seem to be properly addressed. In this paper, we propose a new lightweight RFID tag-reader mutual authentication scheme for use under the EPCglobal framework. The scheme is based on previous work by Konidala and Kim [3]. We attempt to mitigate the weaknesses observed in the original scheme and, at the same time, consider other possible adversarial threats as well as constraints on low-cost RFID tags requirements.

Practical attacks on a mutual authentication scheme under the EPC Class-1 Generation-2 standard

The EPC Class-1 Generation-2 RFID standard provides little security, as has been shown in previous works such as [S. Karthikeyan, M. Nesterenko, RFID security without extensive cryptography, in: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Workshop on Security of Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks, 2005, pp. 63–67; D.N. Duc, J. Park, H. Lee, K. Kim, Enhancing security of EPCglobal Gen-2 RFID tag against traceability and cloning, in: The 2006 Symposium on Cryptography and Information Security, 2006; H.Y. Chien, C.H. Chen, Mutual authentication protocol for RFID conforming to EPC Class 1 Generation 2 standards, Computer Standards & Interfaces 29 (2007) 254–259; P. Peris-Lopez, J.C. Hernandez-Castro, J.M. Estevez-Tapiador, A. Ribagorda, Cryptanalysis of a novel authentication protocol conforming to EPC-C1G2 standard, in: Proceedings of Int’l Conference on RFID Security (RFIDSec)’07, Jul 2007; T.L. Lim, T. Li, Addressing the weakness in a lightweight RFID tag-reader mutual authentication scheme, in Proceedings of the IEEE Int’l Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM) 2007, Nov 2007, pp. 59–63]. In particular, the security of an RFID tag’s access and kill passwords is almost non-existent. Konidala and Kim recently proposed a new mutual authentication scheme [D.M. Konidala, Z. Kim, K. Kim, A simple and cost-effective RFID tag-reader mutual authentication scheme, in: Proceedings of Int’l Conference on RFID Security (RFIDSec)’07, Jul 2007, pp. 141–152] – an improved version of their first attempt [D.M. Konidala, K. Kim, RFID tag-reader mutual authentication scheme utilizing tag’s access password, Auto-ID Labs White Paper WP-HARDWARE-033, Jan 2007] – in which a tag’s access and kill passwords are used for authentication. In this paper, we show that the new scheme continues to present serious security flaws. The 16 least significant bits of the access password can be obtained with probability 2 - 2 , and the 16 most significant bits with a probability greater than 2 - 5 . Finally, we show how an attacker can recover the entire kill password with probability 2 - 2 .