EPCglobal Network Security: Research Challenges and Solutions

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EPCglobal Network Security Research Challenges
and Solutions

• Yingjiu Li
• Assistant Professor
• School of Information Systems
• Singapore Management University
• 1August 2008 _at_ National RFID Center

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What is EPCglobal Network?

• EPC and EPCglobal Network

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Double-Edge Sword

• ID collection, track and trace, information
  sharing
• Adversaries (passive, active, and physical)
• Eavesdropping
• Masquerading
• Replay
• MITM
• De-synchronization
• Tag cloning
• DoS
• Side-channel attack
• Physical attack

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Major Security Requirements

• Private identification, anti-tracking, secure
  information sharing
• Our focus private ID and anti-tracking
• Strong, moderate, weak, null anti-tracking
• Secure handover (ownership transfer)

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Challenges in Protocol Design

• Conflicting objectives with constraints

Security (private ID and anti-tracking)
Cost
Efficiency (dynamic structure and massive data)
Visibility (track and trace)
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Technical Solutions

• RFID privacy without ownership handover
• Overview of problems and proposed solutions
  (Garfinkel, Juels, and Pappu SP 05)
• RFID security in EPCglobal Network (RFID-enabled
  supply chain)
• Private ID encryption or keyed hash of ID
• Anti-tracking random numbers are used to
  generate private ID
• Secure ownership handover key update with
  de-synchronization resilience
• Visibility distributed or centralized
• Efficiency how to search DB to identify a tag
  (linear or log-linear)
• Low cost thousands of gates with PRNG and hash

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Solution 1 Protecting RFID Communications in
Supply Chains (Li and Ding ASIACCS 07)
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Solution 2 RFID Tag Ownership Transfer (Song
RFIDSec 08)
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Solution 3 Unidirectional Key Distribution
Across Time and Space (Juels, Pappu, Parno
USENIX 08)
Secret sharing across space a secret key is
distributed across the tags in a pallet.
Secret sharing across time a secret key is
distributed across multiple pallets.
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Solution 4 Dual Security Modes in RFID-Enabled
Supply Chain Systems
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Comparison of Typical Technical Solutions
Anti-tracking Handover and visibility Efficiency (tag search) Cost (tag)
ASIACCS 07 Weak Distributed (EPC IS) Batch process Moderate
RFIDSec 08 Strong Distributed (EPC IS) Tag by tag Moderate
USENIX 08 Null Distributed (EPC IS) Decryption Low
Dual modes Strong Centralized (EPC DS) Switch Moderate
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Future Direction

• A security framework for EPCglobal network
• Access control, flow control, disclosure control,
  trust negotiation, key management, audit,
  visibility maintenance, query authentication at
  high level
• Secure RFID protocol at low level (covert
  channel)
• Ownership handover in between (key management)

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Questions?
Please contact me at yjli_at_smu.edu.sg