Security challenges for RFID key applications

RFID technology is an emerging market with a wide spectrum of application domains. The introduction of RFID systems in industrial manufacturing has already been taken up more than ten years ago. Currently RFID tags are appearing in public environments like ticketing applications and retail supply chains. One the one hand mass applications will imply a break-through for RFID technologies, on the other hand new security issues have to be addressed in order to obtain an add-on benefit compared to classical barcode applications. In this contribution we address RFID security issues in general and related to selected application scenarios. At first we introduce basic RFID security requirements. Subsequently application oriented security measures are discussed for three application scenarios: automotive production, retail supply chains and anti-counterfeiting for pharmaceutical products. Finally challenges and perspectives for future improvements of security measures in RFID systems and privacy issues will be outlined. 1 Security of RFID systems The consideration of RFID system security can be addressed on different levels: the field of security for middleware and databases has been generally addressed in information technologies and internet based systems during the recent decade. Therefore in this contribution we focus on the RFID tag to interrogator interface and its wireless information transmission. Basic principles for attacking such RFID frontend systems are among others: