Introduction to Solution to Privacy Issues in RFID Item-level Applications Project:
This paper discussed about a solution that addresses the privacy issues of Radio Frequency Identification item-level applications and also demonstrates a solution which provides high security with low manufacturing and management cost.
Overview:
Automated identification is possible in RFID without the knowledge of tag bearer and it is one of the major privacy concerns of RFID. In RFID item-level applications this unauthorized read can be prevented with the help of traditional cryptographic operations like authentication and encryption but these operations are too costly in RFID. Automated identification also raises privacy concerns like inventorying and clandestine tracking.
Many researches has been carried out to provide consumer privacy in the RFID world. Physical approaches such as peeling off tags antennas or physical triggers do not provide protection from clandestine inventorying. The trade-off between cryptographic operations and low-cost has become a major challenge in designing RFID tags. With the new proposed RFID structure, the tags need not store more information. Tags need to carry only the ID numbers to avoid clandestine and eavesdropping tracking. Information security, integrity and non-repudiation are protected by the database in the new RFID structure.
Conclusions
This paper proposed a solution to the privacy concerns in RFID in item-level applications at low manufacturing and maintenance cost. In this system, RFID tags do not need a PIN or a secret key authentication which in turn reduces the costly key distribution and management. Tags carry only ID numbers and uses hash function to prevent clandestine tracking. This eliminates eavesdropping attacks because no reader will get meaningful information from tag responses. Information related to tags is so secured and stored in a back-end database.
This information will send to end-users along the supply chains through cryptographic operations. Burden of using cryptographic operations shifts from tags to database so tags are easy to manufacture and maintain. Tags carry only ID numbers, which are divided into segments, which will helps to reduce computational complexity of database management.