PUF Based Scalable Private RFID Authentication

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving authentication scheme for RFID systems with fast lookup time. Our solution is based on the use of Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs). Although there are many proposals that addresses the security and privacy issues of RFID, the search efficiency still remains as a challenging issue. A first tree based mutual authentication scheme for RFID systems has been proposed by Molnar and Wagner to solve the search efficiency problem. The large communication overhead of this scheme has been reduced by Dimitriou performing the authentication with one message from the tag to the reader. However, tree-based schemes are vulnerable to tag compromising attack due to lack key-updating mechanism. Therefore, tree-based schemes are weak private in the Vaudenay-Model. In this paper, we present a tree-based authentication protocol for RFID systems that is destructive-private in the Vaudenay-Model. Our proposed scheme provides resistance against tag compromising attack by using PUFs as a secure storage to keep secrets of the tag.