An Efficient Hash-based RFID Grouping Authentication Protocol Providing Missing Tags Detection

Abstract

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a promising technology which can be applied in many areas, including supply chains logistics and medical treatment. Due to practical requirements of verifying multiple objects simultaneously, the authentication towards large numbers of RFID tags or tag groups remains a hot topic. However, because of the resource limitation of low-cost RFID tags, only basic cryptographic encryptions can be applied on the tag sides. As a result, security and privacy risks towards the RFID system remain crucial issues to be solved. Additionally, in some complex scenarios such as factory or harbor, some tags may be missing or temporarily disabled due to environmental interference. In this paper, an efficient hash-based RFID grouping authentication protocol providing missing tags detection is proposed. In our assumption, each reader of the authentication system can verify large amounts of RFID tags within its ranges. Note that it is not necessary for the reader to predefine the tags into groups during large-scale authentication. Instead, the RFID system can automatically divide the tags into different groups according to the given slots and bitmap. Moreover, the proposed protocol can detect and reset the missing tags so that the missing tag can rejoin the system. Security analysis shows that this protocol can offer sufficient security assurances and resist various attacks. Subsequently, the performance analysis illustrates that the proposed protocol yields better performance than the state-of-the-art RFID grouping authentication protocols.