TY - GEN
T1 - Securing RFIDs by randomizing the modulation and channel
AU - Hassanieh, Haitham
AU - Wang, Jue
AU - Katabi, Dina
AU - Kohno, Tadayoshi
PY - 2015/1/1
Y1 - 2015/1/1
N2 - RFID cards are widely used in sensitive applications such as access control and payment systems. Past work shows that an eavesdropper snooping on the communication between a card and its legitimate reader can break their cryptographic protocol and obtain their secret keys. One solution to this problem is to install stronger encryption on the cards. However, RFIDs' size, power, and cost limitations do not allow for strong encryption protocols. Further, changing the encryption on the cards requires revoking billions of cards in consumers' hands, which is impracticable. This paper presents RF-Cloak, a solution that protects RFIDs from the above attacks, without any changes to today's cards. RF-Cloak achieves this performance using a novel transmission system that randomizes both the modulation and the wireless channels. It is the first system that defends RFIDs against MIMO eavesdroppers, even when the RFID reader has no MIMO capability. A prototype of our design built using software radios demonstrates its ability to protect commercial RFIDs from both single-antenna and MIMO eavesdroppers.
AB - RFID cards are widely used in sensitive applications such as access control and payment systems. Past work shows that an eavesdropper snooping on the communication between a card and its legitimate reader can break their cryptographic protocol and obtain their secret keys. One solution to this problem is to install stronger encryption on the cards. However, RFIDs' size, power, and cost limitations do not allow for strong encryption protocols. Further, changing the encryption on the cards requires revoking billions of cards in consumers' hands, which is impracticable. This paper presents RF-Cloak, a solution that protects RFIDs from the above attacks, without any changes to today's cards. RF-Cloak achieves this performance using a novel transmission system that randomizes both the modulation and the wireless channels. It is the first system that defends RFIDs against MIMO eavesdroppers, even when the RFID reader has no MIMO capability. A prototype of our design built using software radios demonstrates its ability to protect commercial RFIDs from both single-antenna and MIMO eavesdroppers.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84967215016&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84967215016
T3 - Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2015
SP - 235
EP - 249
BT - Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2015
PB - USENIX
T2 - 12th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2015
Y2 - 4 May 2015 through 6 May 2015
ER -