Privacy-Preserving authorized RFID authentication protocols

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been widely ad-opted for object identification. An RFID system comprises three essential components, namely RFID tags, readers and a backend server. Conventionally, the system is considered to be controlled by a single party who maintains all the secret information. However, in some practical scenarios, RFID tags, readers and servers could be operated by different parties. Although the private information should not be shared, the system should allow a valid tag to be authenticated by a legal reader. The challenge in designing the system is preserving the tag and reader’s privacy. In this paper, we propose a novel concept of authorized RFID authentication. The proposed protocols allow the tag to be merely identifiable by an authorized reader and the server cannot reveal the tag during the reader-server interaction. We provide a formal definition of privacy and security models of authorized authentication protocols under the strong and weak notions and propose three provably secure protocols.