Quantum-Resistant Authentication Scheme for RFID Systems Using Lattice-Based Cryptography
This addresses the need for quantum-resistant authentication in RFID systems, which is critical for applications like supply chain management and access control, and is incremental as it builds on lattice-based cryptography but extends security to insecure channels.
The paper tackles the problem of securing RFID systems against quantum attacks by proposing a lattice-based mutual authentication scheme that is secure even when both reader-server and tag-reader channels are insecure, providing robust security against various attacks and demonstrating strong security guarantees through formal verification.
We propose a novel quantum-resistant mutual authentication scheme for radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems. Our scheme uses lattice-based cryptography and, in particular, achieves quantum-resistance by leveraging the hardness of the inhomogeneous short integer solution (ISIS) problem. In contrast to prior work, which assumes that the reader-server communication channel is secure, our scheme is secure even when both the reader-server and tag-reader communication channels are insecure. Our proposed protocol provides robust security against man-in-the-middle (MITM), replay, impersonation, and reflection attacks, while also ensuring unforgeability and preserving anonymity. We present a detailed security analysis, including semi-formal analysis and formal verification using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool. In addition, we analyze the storage, computation, and communication costs of the proposed protocol and compare its security properties with those of existing protocols, demonstrating that our scheme offers strong security guarantees. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first quantum-resistant authentication protocol for RFID systems that comprehensively addresses the insecurity of both the reader-server and tag-reader communication channels.