Shedding Light on RFID Distance Bounding Protocols and Terrorist Fraud Attacks

The vast majority of RFID authentication protocols assume the proximity between readers and tags due to the limited range of the radio channel. However, in real scenarios an intruder can be located between the prover (tag) and the verifier (reader) and trick this last one into thinking that the prover is in close proximity. This attack is generally known as a relay attack in which scope distance fraud, mafia fraud and terrorist attacks are included. Distance bounding protocols represent a promising countermeasure to hinder relay attacks. Several protocols have been proposed during the last years but vulnerabilities of major or minor relevance have been identified in most of them. In 2008, Kim et al. [18] proposed a new distance bounding protocol with the objective of being the best in terms of security, privacy, tag computational overhead and fault tolerance. In this paper, we analyze this protocol and we present a passive full disclosure attack, which allows an adversary to discover the long-term secret key of the tag. The presented attack is very relevant, since no security objectives are met in Kim et al.’s protocol. Then, design guidelines are introduced with the aim of facilitating protocol designers the stimulating task of designing secure and efficient schemes against relay attacks. Finally a new protocol, named Hitomi and inspired by [18], is designed conforming the guidelines proposed previously. Keywords– RFID, distance bounding protocols, relay attacks, terrorist fraud attacks, full disclosure attacks.