RFID seeking: Finding a lost tag rather than only detecting its missing

This paper proposes a novel type of RFID application, i.e., RFID seeking. Several existing types of RFID applications such as monitoring, searching, locating/navigating, are similar with RFID seeking. However, they are either inapplicable or vulnerable for RFID seeking scenarios, in which a user is to find a lost tagged item in a blind spot, or to find a wanted item among a mass of similar ones. In this paper, detailed requirements for RFID seeking are suggested. The first secure RFID seeking protocol is proposed, meeting all the given requirements. Its security is formally verified by using the AVISPA tool. The proposed protocol is server-less, lightweight, privacy-friendly to both RFID readers and tags, and is secure against common attacks such as eavesdropping, manipulating, replaying, tracing, Denial of Service (DoS), etc. & 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.