Cloud-based RFID authentication

Along with the development of cloud computing, cloud-based RFID is receiving more and more attentions of researchers and engineers. However, there is no research in which cloud computing is applied to RFID authentication schemes. Most current works lay emphasis on functionalities, lacking considerations about security and privacy. Classical RFID authentication schemes fail to meet the special security and privacy requirements of cloud-based RFID. The basic postulates of traditional backend-sever-based RFID authentication, i.e. secure backend channel and entirely trustworthy database, are no longer natively tenable in cloud-based RFID scenarios. In this paper, a virtual private network agency is suggested to build secure backend channels and to provide readers with anonymous access to the cloud. The cloud database is structured as an encrypted hash table. The first cloud-based RFID authentication protocol preserving tag/reader privacy to database keepers is proposed. Comparing with classical schemes, the proposed scheme has advantages in deployment cost saving, pervasiveness of authentication, scalability of O(1) complexity to verify a tag, mobile reader holders' privacy preserving, and database security.