Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC) are wireless technologies applied in several domains, among which, remote education.The communication between different components of this system is unsecured, which may lead to several security and privacy problems.Designing authentication protocols to protect a remote education system in an open environment (e.g.NFC, RFID, and Internet) is a challenging task.Recently, Yang et al. proposed a mutual authentication protocol based on the hash function for RFID systems to secure this system.Yang et al. showed that their protocol is secure and can resist various attacks.This work proves that Yang et al.'s protocol does not achieve reader authentication, location privacy, and security forward.Furthermore, we propose an enhanced authentication protocol for secure remote education systems (EAP-SRES) using NFC technology.Our protocol is based on post-quantum cryptosystem to resist quantum attacks.Security analysis by using CL-AtSe (Constraint Logic based Attack Searcher) tool and Ouafi-Phan privacy model shows that the EAP-SRES protocol achieves the requirements of mutual authentication, untraceability and resists different possible attacks.In addition, EAP-SRES protocol is very efficient in term of performance.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC) are wireless technologies applied in several domains, among which, remote education.The communication between different components of this system is unsecured, which may lead to several security and privacy problems.Designing authentication protocols to protect a remote education system in an open environment (e.g.NFC, RFID, and Internet) is a challenging task.Recently, Yang et al. proposed a mutual authentication protocol based on the hash function for RFID systems to secure this system.Yang et al. showed that their protocol is secure and can resist various attacks.This work proves that Yang et al.'s protocol does not achieve reader authentication, location privacy, and security forward.Furthermore, we propose an enhanced authentication protocol for secure remote education systems (EAP-SRES) using NFC technology.Our protocol is based on post-quantum cryptosystem to resist quantum attacks.Security analysis by using CL-AtSe (Constraint Logic based Attack Searcher) tool and Ouafi-Phan privacy model shows that the EAP-SRES protocol achieves the requirements of mutual authentication, untraceability and resists different possible attacks.In addition, EAP-SRES protocol is very efficient in term of performance.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a prominent technology within the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, offering efficient and reliable object identification in various domains, including business, healthcare, and manufacturing. The security of RFID systems is of paramount importance, and recent authentication protocols have been developed to address these security concerns. In this survey paper, we explore and evaluate the latest authentication protocols designed to enhance security in RFID communications, primarily concentrating on the interaction between RFID readers and tags. We critically assess contemporary lightweight RFID authentication protocols, considering aspects such as security requirements, computational efficiency, and resilience against potential attacks. However, with the advent of quantum computing, these protocols are under scrutiny for their vulnerability. As a result, we emphasize the need for researchers to shift their focus toward post-quantum cryptography solutions to bolster the security of RFID systems. This paper serves as a comprehensive overview of recent developments in RFID authentication, shedding light on the pressing need for quantum-resistant security measures in this field.
As a non-contact identification technology, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is widely used in various Internet of Things applications. However, RFID systems are highly vulnerable to diverse attacks due to the openness of communication links between readers and tags, leading to serious security and privacy concerns. Numerous RFID authentication protocols have been designed that employ hash functions and symmetric cryptography to secure communications. Despite these efforts, such schemes generally exhibit limitations in key management flexibility and scalability, which significantly restricts their applicability in large-scale RFID deployments. Confronted with this challenge, public key cryptography offers an effective solution. Taking into account factors such as parameter size, computational complexity, and resistance to quantum attacks, the NTRU algorithm emerges as one of the most promising choices. Since the NTRU signature algorithm is highly complex and requires large parameters, there are currently only a few NTRU encryption-based RFID authentication protocols available, all of which exhibit significant security flaws-such as supporting only one-way authentication, failing to address public key distribution, and so on. Moreover, performance evaluations of the algorithm in these contexts are often incomplete. This paper proposes a mutual authentication protocol for RFID based on the NTRU encryption algorithm to address security and privacy issues. The security of the protocol is analyzed using the BAN-logic tools and some non-formalized methods, and it is further validated through simulation with the AVISPA tool. With the parameter set (N, p, q) = (443, 3, 2048), the NTRU algorithm can provide 128 bits of post-quantum security strength. This configuration not only demonstrates greater foresight at the theoretical security level but also offers significant advantages in practical energy consumption and computation time when compared to traditional algorithms such as ECC, making it a highly competitive candidate in the field of post-quantum cryptography.
Mobile RFID is a new application that uses a mobile phone as an RFID reader with wireless technology and provides a new valuable service to users by integrating RFID and ubiquitous sensor network infrastructures with mobile communication and wireless Internet. Whereas the mobile RFID system has many advantages, privacy violation problems on the reader side are very concerning to individuals and researchers. Unlike in regular RFID environments, where the communication channel between the server and reader is assumed to be secure, the communication channel between the backend server and the RFID reader in the mobile RFID system is not assumed to be safe. Therefore it has become necessary to devise a new communication protocol that secures the privacy of mobile RFID-enabled devices. Recently, Lo et al. proposed a mutual key agreement protocol that secures the authenticity and privacy of engaged mobile RFID readers by constructing a secure session key between the reader and server. However, this paper shows that this protocol does not meet all of the necessary security requirements. Therefore we developed an enhanced mutual key agreement protocol for mobile RFID-enabled devices that alleviates these concerns. We further show that our protocol can enhance data security and provide privacy protection for the reader in an unsecured mobile RFID environment, even in the presence of an active adversary.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is now widely used in medical Internet of Things (IoT) systems. As its use grows, protecting patient data has become a major concern. The rise of quantum computing makes this challenge even more serious. In this paper, we present an adaptive and lightweight mutual authentication protocol for medical RFID systems. The protocol is based on the Ring Learning With Errors (RLWE) problem, which provides strong post-quantum security. It introduces an adaptive mechanism that adjusts RLWE parameters for tags with different security needs. This design achieves a balance between protection and resource use. To improve robustness, the protocol also includes a pseudonym update process that prevents desynchronization. We analyze its security in detail. The analysis combines a formal proof in the Random Oracle model and symbolic verification with the Scyther tool. Results show that the protocol can resist replay, man-in-the-middle, and impersonation attacks. It also preserves tag anonymity and forward secrecy. Performance tests further confirm its efficiency. On the tag side, the average computation time is only 7.67931 ms. These results suggest that the protocol is well-suited for secure and efficient authentication in resource-limited medical RFID environments under post-quantum threats.
Recently, Wei & Chen proposed a secure three-party mutual authentication protocol for RFID based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Their approach can allow insecure communication between the reader and the backend, so their approach must achieve mutual authentication between the tag, reader, and backend. In addition, their method also satisfies the essential characteristics of RFID systems, such as confidentiality, anonymity, resistance to tracking attacks, and spoofing attacks. However, this article finds that its method cannot meet the mutual authentication and denial of service attacks.
We propose a novel quantum-resistant mutual authentication scheme for radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems. Our scheme uses lattice-based cryptography and, in particular, achieves quantum-resistance by leveraging the hardness of the inhomogeneous short integer solution (ISIS) problem. In contrast to prior work, which assumes that the reader-server communication channel is secure, our scheme is secure even when both the reader-server and tag-reader communication channels are insecure. Our proposed protocol provides robust security against man-in-the-middle (MITM), replay, impersonation, and reflection attacks, while also ensuring unforgeability and preserving anonymity. We present a detailed security analysis, including semi-formal analysis and formal verification using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool. In addition, we analyze the storage, computation, and communication costs of the proposed protocol and compare its security properties with those of existing protocols, demonstrating that our scheme offers strong security guarantees. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first quantum-resistant authentication protocol for RFID systems that comprehensively addresses the insecurity of both the reader-server and tag-reader communication channels.