Public Key Cryptography and RFID Tags.

Máire McLoone, Matt J. B. Robshaw

Abstract

When exploring solutions to some of the formidable security problems facing RFID deployment, researchers are often willing to countenance the use of a strong symmetric primitive such as the AES. At the same time it is often claimed that public key cryptography cannot be deployed on low-cost tags. In this paper we give a detailed analysis of the GPS identification scheme. We show that with regards to all three attributes of space, power, and computation time, the on-tag demands of GPS identification compare favourably to the landmark AES implementation by Feldhofer et al.. Thus, assumed limits to implementing asymmetric cryptography on low-end devices may need to be re-evaluated.