Title: An improved authentication protocol for mobile agent device in RFID environment

Authors: Chia-Hui Wei; Min-Shiang Hwang; Augustin Yeh-Hao Chin

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, National Tsing Hua University 101, Section 2, Kuang Fu Road, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan; National Central Library, No.20, Zhongshan S. Rd., Zhongzheng District, Taipei City 10001, Taiwan. ' Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Asia University, 500, Lioufeng Rd., Wufeng, Taichung 41354, Taiwan. ' Department of Computer Science, National Tsing Hua University 101, Section 2, Kuang Fu Road, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan

Abstract: In the past researches, most of the authentication protocols were designed in an effort to solve the RFID security and privacy problem regarding the encrypted communication between the database and readers, and readers and tags. Based on the proposal of Mobile Agent device for RFID privacy Protection (MARP), some security problems have been exposed. Later on, protecting the privacy with a mobile agent device in RFID environment (eMARP) has shown improvement on MARP. The mobile agent device provides more powerful computation than the tag, in addition to the privacy protection along with the forgery detection. However, we found out that the authentication protocol of eMARP could not resist location tracking. Therefore, we will discuss and demonstrate that the eMARP-based RFID system does not have ability to achieve location tracking in this paper. We have improved the authentication protocol of eMARP-based RFID system and also have eliminated its vulnerability.

Keywords: authentication protocols; radio frequency identification; RFID; security; privacy protection; privacy preservation; mobile agents; mobile communications; agent-based systems; multi-agent systems; forgery detection; location tracking; vulnerability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMC.2012.048884

International Journal of Mobile Communications, 2012 Vol.10 No.5, pp.508 - 520

Published online: 31 Aug 2012 *

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