Lightweight mutual authentication RFID protocol for secure multi-tag simultaneous authentication in ubiquitous environments

RFID is a core technology enabling a ubiquitous environment. Its various applications have shown great progress in our daily life in fields such as distribution management, non-contacting authentication, payment cards, and hi-pass (highway toll payment) cards among others. However, the low security of RF (radio frequency) in the authentication stage makes most RFID tags on the market susceptible to privacy breaches and malicious attacks. This paper presents a lightweight bilateral RFID protocol design which reinforces the security vulnerabilities of conventional RFID systems. This design lightens the encryption process, enabling the adoption of protocols in the UHF bands proposed by the EPC Class-1 Generation-2 standards. It also utilizes the core characteristics of EPC tags, facilitating tag-to-tag bilateral authentication. Additionally, multi-tag authentication is applied for the inventory management and distribution environments that use UHF band RFID systems. The proposed protocol provides robust security regarding the known flaws of RF communication and has taken hardware into consideration allowing practical utilization such as management of food, medicine and medical supplies, and manufacturing components.