RFID Privacy Using Spatially Distributed Shared Secrets

Many of today’s proposed RFID privacy schemes rely on the encryption of tag IDs with user-chosen keys. However, password management quickly becomes a bottleneck in such proposals, rendering them infeasible in situations where tagged items are repeatedly exchanged in informal (i.e., personal) situations, in particular outside industrial supply-chains or supermarket checkout lanes. An alternative to explicit access control management are RFID privacy systems that provides access to tag IDs over time, i.e., only after prolonged and detailed reading of an item. Such themes can minimize the risk of unwanted exposure through accidental read-outs, or offer protection during brief encounters with strangers. This paper describes a spatially distributed ID-disclosure scheme that uses a (potentially large) set of miniature RFID tags to distribute the true ID of an item across the entire product surface. We introduce the underlying mechanism of our spatially distributed RFID privacy system and ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: UCS
• Authors: Marc Langheinrich, Remo Marti
• Keywords: Applied Computing, RFID Privacy, RFID Privacy Schemes, Tag Ids, UCS 2007