ALGSICS: combining physics and cryptography to enhance security and privacy in RFID systems

  • Authors:
  • Neil Bird;Claudine Conrado;Jorge Guajardo;Stefan Maubach;Geert-Jan Schrijen;Boris Skoric;Anton M. H. Tombeur;Peter Thueringer;Pim Tuyls

  • Affiliations:
  • Philips Research Europe, Eindhoven, The Netherlands;Philips Research Europe, Eindhoven, The Netherlands;Philips Research Europe, Eindhoven, The Netherlands;IMAPP, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands;Philips Research Europe, Eindhoven, The Netherlands;Philips Research Europe, Eindhoven, The Netherlands;Philips Research Europe, Eindhoven, The Netherlands;NXP, Gratkorn, Austria;Philips Research Europe, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • ESAS'07 Proceedings of the 4th European conference on Security and privacy in ad-hoc and sensor networks
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

In this paper, we introduce several new mechanisms that are cheap to implement or integrate into RFID tags and that at the same time enhance their security and privacy properties. Our aim is to provide solutions that make use of existing (or expected) functionality on the tag or that are inherently cheap and thus, enhance the privacy friendliness of the technology "almost" for free. Our proposals, for example, make use of environmental information (presence of light temperature, humidity, etc.) to disable or enable the RFID tag. A second possibility that we explore is the use of delays in revealing a secret key used to later establish a secure communication channel. We also introduce the idea of a "sticky tag," which can be used to re-enable a disabled (or killed) tag whenever the user considers it to be safe. We discuss the security and describe usage scenarios for all solutions. Finally, we review previous works that use physical principles to provide security and privacy in RFID systems.