Lightweight Distance bound Protocol for Low Cost RFID Tags

Abstract: Almost all existing RFID authentication schemes (tag/reader) are vulnerable to relay attacks, because of their inability to estimate the distance to the tag. These attacks are very serious since it can be mounted without the notice of neither the reader nor the tag and cannot be prevented by cryptographic protocols that operate at the application layer. Distance bounding protocols represent a promising way to thwart relay attacks, by measuring the round trip time of short authenticated messages. All the existing distance bounding protocols use random number generator and hash functions at the tag side which make them inapplicable at low cost RFID tags. This paper proposes a lightweight distance bound protocol for low cost RFID tags. The proposed protocol based on modified version of Gossamer mutual authentication protocol. The implementation of the proposed protocol meets the limited abilities of low-cost RFID tags.