Cataloging RFID Privacy and Security

Abstract:
Due to recommendations from government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense or the Food and Drug Administration, mandates from private sector companies such as WalMart, Metro or Tesco, and even visions such as that of the Internet of Things, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies have gained great thrust. The widespread realization of existing and envisioned applications, however, requires researchers, developers and adopters to carefully consider the way these technologies will be applied. In this paper we inspect the current research on two quality attributes that greatly impact all actors of the RFID ecosystem: privacy and security. In order to ensure an appropriate quality of service, these aspects are tackled throughout the protocol stack linking tags and readers. We explore different mechanisms and catalog them in each of these layers, discerning the attacks faced and providing technical insight on the proposed alternatives.