Active proxy masking for protecting private RFID tags

With RFID technology, an item can be conveniently identified by the identifier of the RFID tag attached to it. Some private information of a tag could however be disclosed because a snooper may derive meaningful information from such an identifier and trace the tag´s itinerary. To prevent privacy disclosure from tag IDs, we propose to use an active RFID proxy masking device, known as aRPM, to block the identifier of a tag during an interrogation session. The main idea of our scheme is to masquerade an identifier with a bit-synchronized mask when the identifier is being emitted. With our scheme, only authorized interrogators know the secret mask and are able to reveal the identifier by removing the mask. Experimental results show that our solution is practical and effective as compared with existing methods.