Ultralightweight RFID authentication protocol based on Random partitions of pseudorandom identifier and pre-shared secret value

As open and wireless RFID air interfaces suffer from severe threats, concerns with respect to the security and privacy problems are increasingly becoming noteworthy issues. The paper proposes an ultralightweight RFID authentication protocol based on Random partition (RPAP) to achieve security and efficiency. The protocol adopts multiple mechanisms (i.e. random partition, dynamic update, and mutual authentication) as safeguards in the air interface. Specifically, random partition mechanism is used to divide the pseudorandom identifier and pre-shared secret value for bitwise operations; dynamic update mechanism enhances the freshness during identifications; double-entity-round mutual authentication mechanism provides stratified access control. Meanwhile, attack models are established to analyze the resistance to typical attacks (i.e. replay, spoofing, tracking, and tampering) in the primary and further authentication. Furthermore, security and performance are analyzed to prove that the protocol owns high security, high efficiency, and low complexity. The protocol is practical for the low-cost and resource-limited RFID applications.