Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology one of the most promising
technologies in the field of ubiquitous computing. Indeed, RFID technology may
well replace barcode technology. Although it offers many advantages over other
identification systems, there are also associated security risks that are not
easy to be addressed. When designing a real lightweight authentication protocol
for low cost RFID tags, a number of challenges arise due to the extremely
limited computational, storage and communication abilities of Low-cost RFID
tags.
Almost all existing RFID authentication schemes (tag/reader) are vulnerable
to relay attacks, because of their inability to estimate the distance to the
tag. These attacks are very serious since it can be mounted without the notice
of neither the reader nor the tag and cannot be prevented by cryptographic
protocols that operate at the application layer. Distance bounding protocols
represent a promising way to thwart relay attacks, by measuring the round trip
time of short authenticated messages.