RFID ownership transfer with positive secrecy capacity channels

RFID ownership transfer protocols (OTPs) transfer tag ownership rights. Recently, there has been considerable interest in such protocols, however, guaranteeing privacy for symmetric-key settings without trusted third parties (TTPs) is a challenge still unresolved. In this paper, we address this issue and show that it can be solved by using channels with positive secrecy capacity. We implement these channels with noisy tags and provide practical values, thus proving that perfect secrecy is theoretically possible. We then define a communication model that captures spatiotemporal events and describe a first example of symmetric-key based OTP that: (i) is formally secure in the proposed communication model and (ii) achieves privacy with a noisy tag wiretap channel without TTPs

Tag Ownership Transfer in Radio Frequency Identification Systems: A Survey of Existing Protocols and Open Challenges

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a modern approach to identify and track several assets at once in a supply chain environment. In many RFID applications, tagged items are frequently transferred from one owner to another. Thus, there is a need for secure ownership transfer (OT) protocols that can perform the transfer while, at the same time, protect the privacy of owners. Several protocols have been proposed in an attempt to fulfill this requirement. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive and systematic review of the RFID OT protocols that appeared over the years of 2005-2018. In addition, we compare these protocols based on the security goals which involve their support of OT properties and their resistance to attacks. From the presented comparison, we draw attention to the open issues in this field and provide suggestions for the direction that future research should follow. Furthermore, we suggest a set of guidelines to be considered in the design of new protocols. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive survey that reviews the available OT protocols from the early start up to the current state of the art

Principles of Physical Layer Security in Multiuser Wireless Networks: A Survey

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the domain of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks. The essential premise of physical-layer security is to enable the exchange of confidential messages over a wireless medium in the presence of unauthorized eavesdroppers without relying on higher-layer encryption. This can be achieved primarily in two ways: without the need for a secret key by intelligently designing transmit coding strategies, or by exploiting the wireless communication medium to develop secret keys over public channels. The survey begins with an overview of the foundations dating back to the pioneering work of Shannon and Wyner on information-theoretic security. We then describe the evolution of secure transmission strategies from point-to-point channels to multiple-antenna systems, followed by generalizations to multiuser broadcast, multiple-access, interference, and relay networks. Secret-key generation and establishment protocols based on physical layer mechanisms are subsequently covered. Approaches for secrecy based on channel coding design are then examined, along with a description of inter-disciplinary approaches based on game theory and stochastic geometry. The associated problem of physical-layer message authentication is also introduced briefly. The survey concludes with observations on potential research directions in this area.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 303 refs. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1303.1609 by other authors. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 201

A control theoretic approach for security of cyber-physical systems

In this dissertation, several novel defense methodologies for cyber-physical systems have been proposed. First, a special type of cyber-physical system, the RFID system, is considered for which a lightweight mutual authentication and ownership management protocol is proposed in order to protect the data confidentiality and integrity. Then considering the fact that the protection of the data confidentiality and integrity is insufficient to guarantee the security in cyber-physical systems, we turn to the development of a general framework for developing security schemes for cyber-physical systems wherein the cyber system states affect the physical system and vice versa. After that, we apply this general framework by selecting the traffic flow as the cyber system state and a novel attack detection scheme that is capable of capturing the abnormality in the traffic flow in those communication links due to a class of attacks has been proposed. On the other hand, an attack detection scheme that is capable of detecting both sensor and actuator attacks is proposed for the physical system in the presence of network induced delays and packet losses. Next, an attack detection scheme is proposed when the network parameters are unknown by using an optimal Q-learning approach. Finally, this attack detection and accommodation scheme has been further extended to the case where the network is modeled as a nonlinear system with unknown system dynamics --Abstract, page iv

Design and Analysis of Security Schemes for Low-cost RFID Systems

With the remarkable progress in microelectronics and low-power semiconductor technologies, Radio Frequency IDentification technology (RFID) has moved from obscurity into mainstream applications, which essentially provides an indispensable foundation to realize ubiquitous computing and machine perception. However, the catching and exclusive characteristics of RFID systems introduce growing security and privacy concerns. To address these issues are particularly challenging for low-cost RFID systems, where tags are extremely constrained in resources, power and cost. The primary reasons are: (1) the security requirements of low-cost RFID systems are even more rigorous due to large operation range and mass deployment; and (2) the passive tags' modest capabilities and the necessity to keep their prices low present a novel problem that goes beyond the well-studied problems of traditional cryptography. This thesis presents our research results on the design and the analysis of security schemes for low-cost RFID systems. Motivated by the recent attention on exploiting physical layer resources in the design of security schemes, we investigate how to solve the eavesdropping, modification and one particular type of relay attacks toward the tag-to-reader communication in passive RFID systems without requiring lightweight ciphers. To this end, we propose a novel physical layer scheme, called Backscatter modulation- and Uncoordinated frequency hopping-assisted Physical Layer Enhancement (BUPLE). The idea behind it is to use the amplitude of the carrier to transmit messages as normal, while to utilize its periodically varied frequency to hide the transmission from the eavesdropper/relayer and to exploit a random sequence modulated to the carrier's phase to defeat malicious modifications. We further improve its eavesdropping resistance through the coding in the physical layer, since BUPLE ensures that the tag-to-eavesdropper channel is strictly noisier than the tag-to-reader channel. Three practical Wiretap Channel Codes (WCCs) for passive tags are then proposed: two of them are constructed from linear error correcting codes, and the other one is constructed from a resilient vector Boolean function. The security and usability of BUPLE in conjunction with WCCs are further confirmed by our proof-of-concept implementation and testing. Eavesdropping the communication between a legitimate reader and a victim tag to obtain raw data is a basic tool for the adversary. However, given the fundamentality of eavesdropping attacks, there are limited prior work investigating its intension and extension for passive RFID systems. To this end, we firstly identified a brand-new attack, working at physical layer, against backscattered RFID communications, called unidirectional active eavesdropping, which defeats the customary impression that eavesdropping is a ``passive" attack. To launch this attack, the adversary transmits an un-modulated carrier (called blank carrier) at a certain frequency while a valid reader and a tag interacts at another frequency channel. Once the tag modulates the amplitude of reader's signal, it causes fluctuations on the blank carrier as well. By carefully examining the amplitude of the backscattered versions of the blank carrier and the reader's carrier, the adversary could intercept the ongoing reader-tag communication with either significantly lower bit error rate or from a significantly greater distance away. Our concept is demonstrated and empirically analyzed towards a popular low-cost RFID system, i.e., EPC Gen2. Although active eavesdropping in general is not trivial to be prohibited, for a particular type of active eavesdropper, namely a greedy proactive eavesdropper, we propose a simple countermeasure without introducing extra cost to current RFID systems. The needs of cryptographic primitives on constraint devices keep increasing with the growing pervasiveness of these devices. One recent design of the lightweight block cipher is Hummingbird-2. We study its cryptographic strength under a novel technique we developed, called Differential Sequence Attack (DSA), and present the first cryptanalytic result on this cipher. In particular, our full attack can be divided into two phases: preparation phase and key recovery phase. During the key recovery phase, we exploit the fact that the differential sequence for the last round of Hummingbird-2 can be retrieved by querying the full cipher, due to which, the search space of the secret key can be significantly reduced. Thus, by attacking the encryption (decryption resp.) of Hummingbird-2, our algorithm recovers 36-bit (another 28-bit resp.) out of 128-bit key with $2^{68}$ ($2^{60}$ resp.) time complexity if particular differential conditions of the internal states and of the keys at one round can be imposed. Additionally, the rest 64-bit of the key can be exhaustively searched and the overall time complexity is dominated by $2^{68}$. During the preparation phase, by investing $2^{81}$ effort in time, the adversary is able to create the differential conditions required in the key recovery phase with at least 0.5 probability. As an additional effort, we examine the cryptanalytic strength of another lightweight candidate known as A2U2, which is the most lightweight cryptographic primitive proposed so far for low-cost tags. Our chosen-plaintext-attack fully breaks this cipher by recovering its secret key with only querying the encryption twice on the victim tag and solving 32 sparse systems of linear equations (where each system has 56 unknowns and around 28 unknowns can be directly obtained without computation) in the worst case, which takes around 0.16 second on a Thinkpad T410 laptop

Mastering Omni-Channel Retailing Challenges with Industry 4.0 Concepts

Omni-Channel Management is an important trend, which allows retailers to improve customer experiences. Notwithstanding, entirely seamless integration of all channels, for example, in terms of customer or pricing data or consistent product offerings, is still a challenging endeavor. Technological developments, such as Industry 4.0 (I4.0), lead to innovation opportunities in the production industry. As there are intersections between I4.0 and Omni-Channel retailing, we propose that prominent Omni-Channel retailing challenges can be overcome by integrating knowledge from both research domains. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to investigate, which I4.0 concepts are utilized in scientific literature to overcome challenges and how these concepts can be transferred to Omni-Channel Management. To make this knowledge tangible for retailers, this article deduces opportunities on the application of I4.0 concepts in Omni-Channel retailing. The results show that especially IoT networks offer numerous deployment options and even Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Factories provide related potentials

Hungarian-Puzzled Text with Dynamic Quadratic Embedding Steganography

Least-Significant-Bit (LSB) is one of the popular and frequently used steganography techniques to hide a secret message in a digital medium. Its popularity is due to its simplicity in implementation and ease of use. However, such simplicity comes with vulnerabilities. An embedded secret message using the traditional LSB insertion is easily decodable when the stego image is suspected to be hiding a secret message.  In this paper, we propose a novel secure and high quality LSB embedding technique. The security of the embedded payload is employed through introducing a novel quadratic embedding sequence. The embedding technique is also text dependent and has non-bounded inputs, making the possibilities of decoding infinite. Due to the exponential growth of and quadratic embedding, a novel cyclic technique is also introduced for the sequence that goes beyond the limits of the cover medium. The proposed method also aims to reduce the noise arising from embedding the secret message by reducing bits changed. This is done by partitioning the cover medium and the secret message into N partitions and artificially creating an assignment problem based on bit change criteria. The assignment problem will be solved using the Hungarian algorithm that will puzzle the secret message partition for an overall least bit change

Security protocols for EPC class-1 Gen-2 RFID multi-tag systems

The objective of the research is to develop security protocols for EPC C1G2 RFID Passive Tags in the areas of ownership transfer and grouping proof

Mortgaging the Meme: Financing and Managing Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovation can be described as the introduction of a new conceptual idea or meme into an existing system that causes the system to be fundamentally altered. Assembly lines, air conditioning, digital film, and personal computers represent such innovations, all of which led to fundamental paradigm shifts. The convergence of globalization, a networked economy, and digital technologies have made disruptive innovation a threat in almost every industry. Changes to publishing, music, and television distribution – along with the rise of social media – highlight this transformation, but they are not alone; manufacturing, retail, payment systems, transportation and other industries are struggling with volatile upheaval caused by such change. Disruptive innovation, however, follows predictable patterns. Investors can anticipate these shifts if their financial transactions are properly structured and effectively documented. The model requires a holistic intellectual property approach which looks beyond just patents. It must explicitly incorporate the underlying meme, and it must account for the inflection points in the transformation pattern. Utilizing this model, inventors, private equity investment structures and established firms can maximize value and promote innovation. This article provides an overview of disruptive innovation from examples of the past decade, identify the underlying patterns of change common to disruptive innovation, highlight strategies to mitigate disruption for existing industry, and address the intellectual property securitization aspects to structure effective deals for both the investors and innovators

Cryptographic Approaches To Security and Privacy Issues In Pervasive Computing

Technological innovation has enabled tiny devices to participate in pervasive com- puting. Such devices are particularly vulnerable to security and privacy threats, because of their limited computing resources and relatively weak physical security. We investigate possible cryptographic solutions to security and privacy problems arising in two kinds of emerging pervasive computing networks: Personal Area Net- works (PANs) and the EPCglobal Network. A number of key management schemes have been proposed for use in PANs, but these schemes only support key management within a PAN. However, as people are increasingly equipped with multiple wireless devices, PANs are likely to be intercon- nected to share information or services. We introduce a term, iPANs, to name such interconnected PANs. We define system models and design goals for key manage- ment in iPANs, and propose a novel security initialisation scheme for use in iPANs. The proposed scheme achieves desirable security and efficiency properties by making use of the unique characteristics of PANs. The EPCglobal Network is designed to give efficiency and cost savings in and beyond the supply chain using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology; however, privacy threats affecting such networks are particularly serious. We construct a formal privacy model for RFID systems accurately reflecting adversarial threats and power. We then give brief privacy analysis for the existing privacy-enhanced RFID schemes which have received wide attention in the literature. We then construct a secure refresh-based RFID system based on re-encryption techniques, and prove its privacy using the defined privacy model. Finally, we show that the proposed scheme can greatly enhance the security and privacy of EPC tags, making the maximum use of given tag functionalities as specified in the standards