Analysis of a Recent Hash Based RFID Authentication Protocol Intended for Telecare Medicine

---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is technologically one of the most popular batch identification methods of our modern age. The low cost RFID stickers (tags) are gradually replacing traditional paper barcodes. However, the use of tags comes at a an additional expense in terms of die area and clock cycle resources needed for secure operation, through open air. Contrarily, due to the cost competition with traditional barcodes, limited resources can be spared for security. Therefore, guaranteeing the integrity and confidentiality of the transmitted information is a hard challenge, in RFID technology. Since the cryptographic algorithms used in computers cannot fit in tags, other strong encryption functions are needed to protect the exchanged information. This is the main reason behind the RFID security community’s convergence on alternative function proposals for obscuring the exchanged information. Unfortunately, many of the proposed schemes have been demonstrated to show security weaknesses. One latest work relies on the strength of hash functions, to recommend an authentication protocol for the mission critical telecare medicine. Naturally, any breach in the security of the proposed protocol may mean a health or privacy risk for its users. The present work uses a two stage analysis to test the proposed protocol. An algebraic analysis is supported by the rainbow tables approach to expose the secrets of the protocol. The security evaluation demonstrates multiple security weaknesses in the protocol’s design. The weaknesses prove to be so grave that the proposed authentication protocol may be classified as insecure and unsafe for its telecare users.