A Lightweight RFID Protocol to protect against Traceability and Cloning attacks

TLDR

RFID identification is emerging as a ubiquitous technology that promises productivity gains in smart applications, yet its widespread deployment raises privacy concerns due to potential traceability and cloning attacks. This work proposes an RFID authentication protocol that enforces user privacy and protects against tag cloning. The protocol achieves mutual tag‑to‑reader and reader‑to‑tag authentication, relies on a secret shared with a database that is refreshed to prevent tracing while maintaining identification efficiency, and is implemented using standard cryptographic hash functions. Security analysis demonstrates that the scheme resists identified attacks, is simple to implement, and guarantees forward privacy so that past messages remain valid even after a tag compromise.

Abstract

RFID identification is a new technology that will become ubiquitous as RFID tags will be applied to every-day items in order to yield great productivity gains or "smart" applications for users. However, this pervasive use of RFID tags opens up the possibility for various attacks violating user privacy. In this work we present an RFID authentication protocol that enforces user privacy and protects against tag cloning. We designed our protocol with both tag-to-reader and reader-to-tag authentication in mind; unless both types of authentication are applied, any protocol can be shown to be prone to either cloning or privacy attacks. Our scheme is based on the use of a secret shared between tag and database that is refreshed to avoid tag tracing. However, this is done in such a way so that efficiency of identification is not sacrificed. Additionally, our protocol is very simple and it can be implemented easily with the use of standard cryptographic hash functions. In analyzing our protocol, we identify several attacks that can be applied to RFID protocols and we demonstrate the security of our scheme. Furthermore, we show how forward privacy is guaranteed; messages seen today will still be valid in the future, even after the tag has been compromised.