A secure RFID authentication protocol for healthcare environments using elliptic curve cryptosystem

Abstract

With the fast advancement of the wireless communication technology and the widespread use of medical systems, the radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been widely used in healthcare environments. As the first important protocol for ensuring secure communication in healthcare environment, the RFID authentication protocols derive more and more attentions. Most of RFID authentication protocols are based on hash function or symmetric cryptography. To get more security properties, elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC) has been used in the design of RFID authentication protocol. Recently, Liao and Hsiao proposed a new RFID authentication protocol using ECC and claimed their protocol could withstand various attacks. In this paper, we will show that their protocol suffers from the key compromise problem, i.e. an adversary could get the private key stored in the tag. To enhance the security, we propose a new RFID authentication protocol using ECC. Detailed analysis shows the proposed protocol not only could overcome weaknesses in Liao and Hsiao's protocol but also has the same performance. Therefore, it is more suitable for healthcare environments.