ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the issues attending to the provision of two security services, namely privacy and availability, in context of radio frequency identification device (RFID) applications. It describes capabilities available to RFID tags for security measures, considering primarily the requirements of passive tags. Communication in RFID is modelled in three distinct layers. There are: the lowest, or physical layer, involving the radio frequency coupling element; the data link or communication layer, including the collision-avoidance protocols, and the protocol or application layer, wherein higher-level mechanisms such as authentication protocols can be implemented. Some types of attacks and threats against RFID are classical strategies such as replay attacks, and interleaving attacks. RFID-facilitated identification is being used to improve the performance of secure identity verification. In RFID technologies, anonymity and availability appear often to conflict. For instance, a privacy preserving technique can be created from an availability threat, as exemplified by the blocker tag proposed in a seminal paper on RFID privacy.
