Hidden Bits Approach for Authentication in RFID Systems

• Published in: Radio Frequency Identification. Security and Privacy Issues pp. 48 - 58
• Main Authors: Klonowski, Marek, Majcher, Krzysztof, Macyna, Wojciech, Zagórski, Filip
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2013
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: authentication; lightweight cryptography; RFID
• ISBN: 3642361390; 9783642361395
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-36140-1_4

We present an authentication scheme designed for tiny and strictly constrained devices like RFID-tags. Authentication is based on the symmetric key shared between a tag and a reader. While a tag needs to perform only simple operations in order to authenticate: to pick n/2 + b random values and then to compute XORs of some values, a reader needs to try 2b possible values to check if a tag replied correctly (b is small). At the same time eavesdropping adversary after r executions of the protocol needs to solve a system of rk-multivariate quadratic equations over GF(2) with nk + rb variables. We present a security discussion of proposed solutions.