Can Jannie verify? Usability of display-equipped RFID tags for security purposes

  • Authors:
  • Alfred Kobsa;Rishab Nithyanand;Gene Tsudik;Ersin Uzun

  • Affiliations:
  • University of California, Irvine, CA, USA. E-mails: {kobsa, gene.tsudik}@uci.edu;Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA. E-mail: rnithyanand@cs.stonybrook.edu;University of California, Irvine, CA, USA. E-mails: {kobsa, gene.tsudik}@uci.edu;Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA. E-mail: ersin.uzun@parc.com

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computer Security - Research in Computer Security and Privacy: Emerging Trends
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

The recent emergence of RFID tags capable of performing public key operations enables a number of new applications in commerce e.g., RFID-enabled credit cards and security e.g., ePassports and access-control badges. While the use of public key cryptography in RFID tags mitigates many difficult security issues, certain important usability-related issues remain, particularly when RFID tags are used for financial transactions or bearer identification.In this paper, we focus exclusively on techniques with user involvement for secure user-to-tag authentication, transaction verification, reader expiration and revocation checking, as well as pairing of RFID tags with other personal devices. Our approach is based on two factors: 1 recent advances in hardware and manufacturing have made it possible to mass-produce inexpensive passive display-equipped RFID tags, and 2 high-end RFID tags used in financial transactions or identification are attended by a human user typically, their owner. Our techniques rely on user involvement coupled with on-tag displays to achieve better security and privacy. Since user acceptance is a crucial factor in this context, we conducted comprehensive user studies to assess usability of all considered methods. This paper reports on our findings.