A Salient Missing Link in RFID Security Protocols

In side channel analysis, an attacker utilizes some legitimate function queries in order to collect the corresponding responses of a cryptographic system while it is functioning in a normal mode. If those responses reveal some unwanted information about the secrecy or privacy, this leakage is called side channel information and these responses are called side channels. In this respect, careless deployments of “secure” RFID authentication protocols are not exceptions and subject to side channel attacks. Focusing on lightweight RFID security protocols; we examine the server responses for several RFID tags and realize that if the database querying is performed through a static process, the RFID system is subject to timing attacks that could easily jeopardize the system’s untraceability criteria. We demonstrate our attack on some well-known protocols and outline a countermeasure by precisely describing the database query mechanism. Furthermore, we analyze the success probability of the attack in terms of the system parameters such as the number of tags, number of cryptographic operations that have to be carried out, and server’s computational power.