Fast Counterfeit RFID Tags Detection With Slot Constraints

RFID tags are prone to counterfeit attacks in supply chain scenarios. The attacker often uses counterfeit tags to replace stolen tags to avoid being detected by the inventory process. To defend against such attacks, existing hash-based schemes have to know the hash functions embedded in tags, which are usually unavailable in large scale systems. This letter proposes a novel group-based slot constraint (GSC) scheme for lightweight counterfeit tag detection in RFID-enabled supply-chain systems. GSC can be integrated into the identification process by leveraging elaborately designed group hash functions to authenticate tags based on their slot correlation. That is, the tags in the same group can always map to slots with a fixed offset, which offers evidence for identifying counterfeit tags with an abnormal slot index. We also provide a theoretical analysis of the time slots required to achieve the desired accuracy. The simulation results show that GSC provides reliable accuracy without knowing exact hash functions.