Security and Privacy of PUF-Based RFID Systems

The last decade has shown an increasing interest in the use of the physically unclonable function (PUF) technology in the design of radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. PUFs can bring extra security and privacy at the physical level that cannot be obtained by symmetric or asymmetric cryptography at the moment. However, many PUF-based RFID schemes proposed in recent years do not even achieve the lowest privacy level in reputable security and privacy models, such as Vaudenay’s model. In contrast, the lowest privacy in this model can be achieved through standard RFID schemes that use only symmetric cryptography. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze this aspect. Thus, it is emphasized the need to use formal models in the study of the security and privacy of (PUF-based) RFID schemes. We broadly discuss the tag corruption oracle and highlight some aspects that can lead to schemes without security or privacy. We also insist on the need to formally treat the cryptographic properties of PUFs to obtain security and privacy proofs. In the end, we point out a significant benefit of using PUF technology in RFID, namely getting schemes that offer destructive privacy in Vaudenay’s model.