Sensing-enabled defenses to RFID unauthorized reading and relay attacks without changing the usage model

Many RFID tags store valuable information privy to their users that can easily be subject to unauthorized reading, leading to owner tracking or impersonation. RFID tags are also susceptible to different forms of relay attacks. This paper presents novel sensing-enabled defenses to unauthorized reading and relay attacks against RFID systems without necessitating any changes to the traditional RFID usage model. More specifically, the paper proposes the use of on-board tag sensors to (automatically) acquire useful contextual information about the tag's environment (or its owner, or the tag itself). It suggests how this information can be used to achieve two security functionalities. First, such context recognition can be leveraged for the purpose of selective tag unlocking - the tag will respond selectively to reader interrogations, i.e., only when it is deemed safe to do so. Second, context recognition can be used as a basis for transaction verification in order to provide protection against a severe form of relay attacks involving malicious RFID readers. To demonstrate the feasibility of the overall idea, a novel selective unlocking mechanism based on owner's posture recognition is presented. The evaluation of the proposed mechanism shows its effectiveness in significantly raising the bar against many different RFID attacks.