Efficient Tag Path Authentication Protocol with Less Tag Memory

Logistical management has been advanced rapidly in these years, taking advantage of the broad connectivity of the Internet. As it becomes an important part of our lives, it also raises many challenging issues, e.g., the counterfeits of expensive goods pose a serious threat to supply chain management. As a result, path authentication becomes especially important in supply chain management, as it helps us maintain object pedigree and supply chain integrity. Meanwhile, a tag path authentication must meet a series of security requirements, such as authentication, privacy, and unlinkability. In addition, the authentication protocol must be efficient. In 2011, the first tag path authentication protocol in an RFID-based supply chain, named “Tracke”, is proposed by Blass et al. in NDSS’11. They have made an important breakthrough in this research area. In this paper, we improve their work and propose a more efficient tag path authentication protocol in an RFID-based supply chain, which meets all the above mentioned security requirements. Our result shows that the proposed protocol can significantly reduce both computational overhead and memory requirement on tags, compared with the previous work.