Survivability Enhancing Techniques for RFID Systems

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been applied in various high security and high integrity settings. As an important ubiquitous technique, RFID offers opportunities for real-time item tracking, object identification, and inventory management. However, due to the high distribution and vulnerability of its components, an RFID system is subject to various threats which could affect the system’s abilities to provide essential services to users. Although there have been intensive studies on RFID security and privacy, there is still no complete solution to RFID survivability. In this paper, the authors classify the RFID security techniques that could be used to enhance an RFID system’s survivability from three aspects, i.e., resilience, robustness and fault tolerance, damage assessment and recovery. A threat model is presented, which can help users identify devastating attacks on an RFID system. An RFID system must be empowered with strong protection to withstand those attacks and provide essential functions to users.