Cryptanalysis of two mutual authentication protocols for low-cost RFID

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is appearing as a favorite technology for automated identification, which can be widely applied to many applications such as e-passport, supply chain management and ticketing. However, researchers have found many security and privacy problems along RFID technology. In recent years, many researchers are interested in RFID authentication protocols and their security flaws. In this paper, we analyze two of the newest RFID authentication protocols which proposed by Fu et al. and Li et al. from several security viewpoints. We present different attacks such as desynchronization attack and privacy analysis over these protocols.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, International Journal of Distributed and Parallel system

Vulnerability Analysis of a Mutual Authentication Protocol Conforming to EPC Class-1 Generation-2 Standard

In this paper we scrutinize the security properties of an RFID authentication protocol conforming to the EPC Class-1 Generation-2 standard. The protocol is suitable for Gen-2 passive tags and requires simple computations. The authors claim that the scheme provides privacy protection and authentication and offers resistant against commonly assumed attacks. We propose a de-synchronization and an impersonation attack in which the disclosing of the secret information (i.e. secret key and static identifier) shared between the tag and the reader is unnecessary to success in these attacks

SLRV: An RFID Mutual Authentication Protocol Conforming to EPC Generation-2 Standard

Having done an analysis on the security vulnerabilities of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) through a desynchronization and an impersonation attacks, it is revealed that the secret information (i.e.: secret key and static identifier) shared between the tag and the reader is unnecessary. To overcome the vulnerability, this paper introduces Shelled Lightweight Random Value (SLRV) protocol; a mutual authentication protocol with high-security potentials conforming to  electronic product code (EPC) Class-1 Generation-2 Tags, based on lightweight and standard cryptography on the tag’s and reader’s side, respectively. SLRV prunes de-synchronization attacks where the updating of internal values is only executed on the tag’s side and is a condition to a successful mutual authentication. Results of security analysis of SLRV, and comparison with existing protocols, are presented

Vulnerability Analysis of a Mutual Authentication Protocol Conforming to EPC Class-1 Generation-2 Standard

In this paper we scrutinize the security properties of an RFID authentication protocol conforming to the EPC Class-1 Generation-2 standard. The protocol is suitable for Gen-2 passive tags and requires simple computations. The authors claim that the scheme provides privacy protection and authentication and offers resistant against commonly assumed attacks. We propose a de-synchronization and an impersonation attack in which the disclosing of the secret information (i.e. secret key and static identifier) shared between the tag and the reader is unnecessary to success in these attacks

An Gen2 Based Security Authentication Protocol for RFID System

AbstractEPC Class-1 Generation-2 specification(Gen2 in brief) has been accepted as the standard for RFID tags under grant number ISO18000-6C. However, Gen2 does not pay due attention to security. For this reason, a Gen2 based security authentication protocol is developed in this paper. In details, we study the security requirements presented in the current Gen2 based RFID authentication protocols[7–13]. Then we point out the security flaws of Chien's mutual authentication protocol[7], and improve the protocol based on a 11 security requirements. Our improved protocol merely uses CRC and PRNG operations supported by Gen2 and meets the 11 security requirements. In contrast to the similar work [14,15] on Chien's protocol or other Gen2 based schemes, our protocol is more secure and our security analysis is much more comprehensive and qualitative

PGMAP: a privacy guaranteed mutual authentication protocol conforming to EPC class 1 gen 2 standards

To resolve the security vulnerabilities and comply with EPC Class 1 Gen 2 UHF RFID (EPC C1G2) Standard at the same time, we present a Privacy Guaranteed Mutual Authentication Protocol (PGMAP). By utilizing the existing functions and memory bank of tag, we amend the processing sequence based on current EPC architecture. An auto-updating index number IDS is enrolled to provide privacy protection to EPC code and a set of light weight algorithms utilizing tag's PRNG are added for authentication. Several attacks to the existing security solutions can be effectively resolved in our protocol. © 2008 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE 2008), Xi'an, China, 22-24 October 2008. In Proceedings of ICEBE, 2008, p. 289-29

A comprehensive RFID solution to enhance inpatient medication safety

Errors involving medication administration can be costly, both in financial and in human terms. Indeed, there is much potential for errors due to the complexity of the medication administration process. Nurses are often singled out as the only responsible of these errors because they are in charge of drug administration. Nevertheless, the interventions of every actor involved in the process and the system design itself contribute to errors (Wakefield et al. (1998) [23]). Proper inpatient medication safety systems can help to reduce such errors in hospitals. In this paper, we review in depth two recent proposals (Chien et al. (2010) [7]; Huang and Ku (2009) [12]) that pursue the aforementioned objective. Unfortunately, they fail in their attempt mainly due to their security faults but interesting ideas can be drawn from both. These security faults refer to impersonation and replay attacks that could produce the generation of a forged proof stating that certain medication was administered to an inpatient when it was not. We propose a leading-edge solution to enhance inpatient medication safety based on RFID technology that overcomes these weaknesses. Our solution, named Inpatient Safety RFID system (IS-RFID), takes into account the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure of a hospital and covers every phase of the drug administration process. From a practical perspective, our system can be easily integrated within hospital IT infrastructures, has a moderate cost, is very ease to use and deals with security aspects as a key point.This work was partially supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under the RUBICON grant "Intrusion Detection in Ubiquitous Computing Technologies" awarded to Aikaterini Mitrokotsa.Publicad

Criptografía ligera en dispositivos de identificación por radiofrecuencia- RFID

Esta tesis se centra en el estudio de la tecnología de identificación por radiofrecuencia (RFID), la cual puede ser considerada como una de las tecnologías más prometedoras dentro del área de la computación ubicua. La tecnología RFID podría ser el sustituto de los códigos de barras. Aunque la tecnología RFID ofrece numerosas ventajas frente a otros sistemas de identificación, su uso lleva asociados riesgos de seguridad, los cuales no son fáciles de resolver. Los sistemas RFID pueden ser clasificados, atendiendo al coste de las etiquetas, distinguiendo principalmente entre etiquetas de alto coste y de bajo coste. Nuestra investigación se centra fundamentalmente en estas últimas. El estudio y análisis del estado del arte nos ha permitido identificar la necesidad de desarrollar soluciones criptográficas ligeras adecuadas para estos dispositivos limitados. El uso de soluciones criptográficas estándar supone una aproximación correcta desde un punto de vista puramente teórico. Sin embargo, primitivas criptográficas estándar (funciones resumen, código de autenticación de mensajes, cifradores de bloque/flujo, etc.) exceden las capacidades de las etiquetas de bajo coste. Por tanto, es necesario el uso de criptografía ligera._______________________________________This thesis examines the security issues of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, one of the most promising technologies in the field of ubiquitous computing. Indeed, RFID technology may well replace barcode technology. Although it offers many advantages over other identification systems, there are also associated security risks that are not easy to address. RFID systems can be classified according to tag price, with distinction between high-cost and low-cost tags. Our research work focuses mainly on low-cost RFID tags. An initial study and analysis of the state of the art identifies the need for lightweight cryptographic solutions suitable for these very constrained devices. From a purely theoretical point of view, standard cryptographic solutions may be a correct approach. However, standard cryptographic primitives (hash functions, message authentication codes, block/stream ciphers, etc.) are quite demanding in terms of circuit size, power consumption and memory size, so they make costly solutions for low-cost RFID tags. Lightweight cryptography is therefore a pressing need. First, we analyze the security of the EPC Class-1 Generation-2 standard, which is considered the universal standard for low-cost RFID tags. Secondly, we cryptanalyze two new proposals, showing their unsuccessful attempt to increase the security level of the specification without much further hardware demands. Thirdly, we propose a new protocol resistant to passive attacks and conforming to low-cost RFID tag requirements. In this protocol, costly computations are only performed by the reader, and security related computations in the tag are restricted to very simple operations. The protocol is inspired in the family of Ultralightweight Mutual Authentication Protocols (UMAP: M2AP, EMAP, LMAP) and the recently proposed SASI protocol. The thesis also includes the first published cryptanalysis of xi SASI under the weakest attacker model, that is, a passive attacker. Fourthly, we propose a new protocol resistant to both passive and active attacks and suitable for moderate-cost RFID tags. We adapt Shieh et.’s protocol for smart cards, taking into account the unique features of RFID systems. Finally, because this protocol is based on the use of cryptographic primitives and standard cryptographic primitives are not supported, we address the design of lightweight cryptographic primitives. Specifically, we propose a lightweight hash function (Tav-128) and a lightweight Pseudo-Random Number Generator (LAMED and LAMED-EPC).We analyze their security level and performance, as well as their hardware requirements and show that both could be realistically implemented, even in low-cost RFID tags