On two RFID privacy notions and their relations

  • Authors:
  • Yingjiu Li;Robert H. Deng;Junzuo Lai;Changshe Ma

  • Affiliations:
  • Singapore Management University, Singapore;Singapore Management University, Singapore;Singapore Management University, Singapore;South China Normal University, China

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC)
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Privacy of RFID systems is receiving increasing attention in the RFID community. Basically, there are two kinds of RFID privacy notions in the literature: one based on the indistinguishability of two tags, denoted as ind-privacy, and the other based on the unpredictability of the output of an RFID protocol, denoted as unp-privacy. In this article, we first revisit the existing unpredictability-based RFID privacy models and point out their limitations. We then propose a new RFID privacy model, denoted as unp*-privacy, based on the indistinguishability of a real tag and a virtual tag. We formally clarify its relationship with the ind-privacy model. It is proven that ind-privacy is weaker than unp*-privacy. Moreover, the minimal (necessary and sufficient) condition on RFID tags to achieve unp*-privacy is determined. It is shown that if an RFID system is unp*-private, then the computational power of an RFID tag can be used to construct a pseudorandom function family provided that the RFID system is complete and sound. On the other hand, if each tag is able to compute a pseudorandom function, then the tags can be used to construct an RFID system with unp*-privacy. In this sense, a pseudorandom function family is the minimal requirement on an RFID tag's computational power for enforcing RFID system privacy. Finally, a new RFID mutual authentication protocol is proposed to satisfy the minimal requirement.