RFID Path Authentication, Revisited

In an RFID-enabled supply chain, where items are outfitted with RFID tags, path authentication based on tag enables the destination checkpoints to validate the route that a tag has already accessed. In this work, we propose a novel, efficient, privacy-preserving path authentication system for RFID-enabled supply chains. Compared to existing Elliptic curve Elgamal Re-encryption (ECElgamal) based solution, our Homomorphic Message authentication Code on arithmetic circuit (HomMAC) based solution offers less memory storage (with limited scalability) and no computational requirement on the reader. However, unlike previous schemes, we allow computational ability inside the tag that consents a new privacy direction to path privacy proposed by Cai et al. in ACNS'12. In addition, we customize a polynomial-based authentication scheme (to thwart potential tag impersonation and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks), so that it fits our new path authentication protocol