Speaker
Muhammad Khizer Kaleem
Title
Physical Layer Approach for Securing RFID Systems
Abstract
Radio
Frequency
IDentification
(RFID)
is
a
contactless,
automatic
identification
wireless
technology
primarily
used
for
identifying
and
tracking
of
objects,
goods
and
humans.
RFID
is
not
only
limited
to
identification
and
tracking
applications.
This
proliferating
wireless
technology
has
been
deployed
in
numerous
securities
sensitive
applications
e.g.
access
control,
e-passports,
contactless
payments,
driver
licence,
transport
ticking
and
health
cards.
RFID
inherits
all
the
security
and
privacy
problems
that
are
related
to
wireless
technology
and
in
addition
to,
that
are
specific
to
RFID
systems.
The
security
and
privacy
protection
schemes
proposed
in
literature
for
wireless
devices
are
mostly
secured
through
symmetric/asymmetric
keys
encryption/decryption
and
hash
functions.
The
security
of
all
these
cryptographic
algorithms
depends
on
computationally
complex
problems
that
are
hard
to
compute
using
available
resources.
However,
these
algorithms
require
cryptographic
operations
on
RFID
tags
which
contradict
the
low
cost
demand
of
RFID
tags.
Due
to
limited
number
of
logic
gates
in
tags
i.e.
5K-10K,
these
methods
are
not
practical.
Much
research
effort
has
done
in
attempt
to
solve
consumer's
privacy
and
security
problem.
Solutions
that
prevent
clandestine
inventory
are
mostly
application
layer
techniques.
To
solve
this
problem,
a
new
RFID
physical
layer
scheme
has
been
proposed.
The
proposed
scheme
use
level
generator
to
produce
different
levels
before
transmitting
the
signal
to
the
tag.
The
tag
response
to
the
signal
sent
by
the
reader
using
backscatter
communications
on
the
same
signal
which
looks
random
to
the
eavesdropper.
Therefore
eavesdropper
cannot
extract
the
information
from
reader
to
tag
and
tag
to
reader
communication
using
passive
as
well
as
active
eavesdropping.
As
reader
knows
the
different
generated
levels
added
to
the
carrier
signal,
it
can
remove
the
levels
and
retrieve
the
tag's
messages.
Supervisor
Professor Guang Gong