Analysis of two protocols using EPC Gen-2 tags for safe inpatient medication

The number of people suffering due to wrong medication is increasing. A hospital-wide ubiquitous system can prevent inpatient medication errors. A correctly designed system guarantees the correct medicine and dosage administration, at the correct time. Such a system also helps tracing the location, time of errors and generates fast alarms to prevent harm to patients. Two proposals using UHF passive radio frequency identification tags have been made. But the proposed schemes give away critical patient information, raising privacy and intentional harm concerns. This work studies the proposals and demonstrates a new full-disclosure attack, on both. In addition, the weaknesses of protocols using the PRNG and CRC functions as encryption algorithms are studied. A conclusion is drawn about the suitability of grouping proofs and other protocols using the EPC Global Class-1 Generation-2 tags, in patient medication.