Unlinkable Identification for Large-scale RFID Systems

Unlinkability, the property that prevents an adversary recognizing whether outputs are from the same user, is an important concept in RFID. Although hash-based schemes can provide unlinkability by using a low-cost hash function, existing schemes are not scalable since the server needs O(N) hash calculations for every ID matching, where N is the number of RFID devices. Our solution is the K-steps ID matching scheme, which can reduce the number of hash calculations on the server to O(logN). In this paper, we explain the protocol, describe a test implementation, and discuss the application of this scheme to practical RFID systems. We also compare the scheme with other hash-based schemes from various viewpoints.

[1]  Sang-Soo Yeo,et al.  Scalable and Flexible Privacy Protection Scheme for RFID Systems , 2005, ESAS.

[2]  Philippe Oechslin,et al.  Reducing Time Complexity in RFID Systems , 2005, Selected Areas in Cryptography.

[3]  Sozo Inoue,et al.  Quantitative evaluation of unlinkable ID matching schemes , 2005, WPES '05.

[4]  Ronald L. Rivest,et al.  Security and Privacy Aspects of Low-Cost Radio Frequency Identification Systems , 2003, SPC.

[5]  Philippe Oechslin,et al.  A scalable and provably secure hash-based RFID protocol , 2005, Third IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops.