SECURITY AND PRIVACY OF RADIO FREQUENCY INDENTIFICATION SYSTEMS

Radio frequency identification transponders can be affixed onto or embedded into every single objects, animals or humans in the world.  The potential benefits are enormous, but so are the risks.  In consequency of the advantages and rewards over existing and prior identification systems such as the ability to uniquely recognize a vast quantity of objects, fast out-of-sight processing, reduced computational complexity, lower and decreasing total ownership costs and much richer capability, RFID applications are being rapidly deployed ubiquitously.  Some of the examples are e-toll payments, secured entry ID systems, border control (e-passports), public transport e-payments ("e-metro-cards"), medicines and pharmaceuticals anti-counterfeiting and tracking.

But the security and privacy concerns remain a thorny issue for the further development of RFID systems.  This survey examines the numerous security threats posed to modern day RFID applications in details.  Besides employing formal cryptographic primitives such as PKC (for example RSA) or Symmetric Key Encryption (for example AES), hash or hash-chain ciphering, many researchres have been exploring non-cryptographic primitives such as bit-wise operations and pseudonyms to provide security fo rRFID systems.  Furthermore, this paper presents a thorough reviw of selectively noteworthy proposed RFID protocols.