A Framework for Assessing RFID System Security and Privacy Risks

Radio Frequency Identification is a technology that uses radio waves to automatically identify physical objects. Researchers have been rapidly developing RFID systems over the last few years, and such systems have proven benefits in many application domains. However, RFID systems also raise serious privacy and security concerns. This article offers a brief review of the main threats to RFID systems and proposes a methodology for qualitatively evaluating the risk level for various application domains. The evaluation is based on three criteria: the system's deployment range, the type of link between the RFID tag and identity-related data, and the domain's security demands. The author also presents a taxonomy of some existing RFID applications and discusses each in relation to the evaluation criteria.